A Hunter Was Out Looking for Deer in West Texas. He Found a Rare Mammoth Tusk Instead
Discovered in the drainage area of a creek bed, the tusk was initially thought to be “just an old stump”
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A hunter was out looking for deer at a private ranch in West Texas when he spotted something unusual sticking out of the ground: a fossilized mammoth tusk.
Now, researchers have successfully excavated the tusk and hoping to find out just how long ago it was that this megafauna roamed the land. They hope to have the results of carbon dating studies within the next few months.
The hunter—whose name has not been released—found the tusk on O2 Ranch, a 272,000-acre property in the Trans-Pecos region of West Texas. Located within the Chihuahuan Desert, not far from Big Bend National Park, the property is a former cattle ranch that’s now leased for hunting.
When Will Juett, the ranch’s manager, saw the hunter’s photo of the tusk, he was initially skeptical.
“I figured it was likely just an old stump,” Juett says in a statement.
But, Juett adds, he also let himself imagine “how great it would be if [the hunter] was right.”
Juett got in touch with Bryon Schroeder and Erika Blecha, archaeologists at Sul Ross University in Alpine, Texas. They were immediately intrigued and quickly pulled together a team of experts to visit the ranch.
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When the researchers arrived, they confirmed that the hunter’s discovery was indeed the tusk of an extinct mammoth. They searched for other remains nearby, but didn’t find any.
“The tusk was located in the drainage area of a creek bed,” says Schroeder, who directs the university’s Center for Big Bend Studies, in the statement. “We realized pretty quickly there was not more to the skeleton, just an isolated tusk that had been separated from the rest of the remains.”
Over the course of two days, the team carefully excavated the tusk and covered it with a protective layer of plaster-covered burlap. They also built a frame to get the large tusk back to the lab.
According to Schroeder, the last time mammoth remains were found in West Texas was in the 1960s in the town of Fort Stockton.
Texas is a well-known hub for mammoth fossils. It’s home to Waco Mammoth National Monument, five acres of federally protected land in Central Texas. Established in 2015, the monument encompasses the first and only known evidence of a nursery herd of Columbian mammoths. Researchers believe the animals—a group of at least six adult females and ten juveniles discovered in 1978—all died in a single, catastrophic event.
Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) were related to woolly mammoths. But, measuring up to 13 feet tall at the shoulders and weighing up to 20,000 pounds, they tended to be larger than their woolly cousins; they were also less hairy. Recent research suggests Columbian mammoths arose after woolly mammoths began mating with another, unknown mammoth lineage.
Columbian mammoths roamed throughout North America, possibly heading as far south as Costa Rica. But Columbian mammoths, along with woolly mammoths and mastodons, began dying out near the end of the last Ice Age, roughly 10,000 years ago.
Today, their fossilized remains are a source of fascination for many individuals—including Juett. The recently discovered tusk “just brings the ancient world to life,” he says in the statement.
“Now, I can’t help but imagine that huge animal wandering around the hills on the O2 Ranch,” he adds. “My next thought is always about the people that faced those huge tusks with only a stone tool in their hand.”
