Complete Mastodon Skeleton? An Update

Paleo Indians, Ohio's first human inhabitants, attacking a mastodon.  (Illustration from Martha A. Potter's 1968 book "Ohio's Prehistoric Peoples".)

On Saturday, August 23, the first day of the dig at the Cedar Creek Mastodon Site, near the Morrow-Richland County line in Ohio,  archaeologists and volunteers uncovered enough mastodon parts to increase hope that a complete skeleton may be found.

In his August 25 update e-mail to volunteers, Dr. Nigel Brush, associate professor of geology at Ashland University, said that the crew and volunteers found bone fragments that “appear to be from the ribs, and vertebrae or leg bones.”   They recovered pieces of bone, tusk, and tooth enamel from six of seven units dug, each two- by two-meters.  The only unit where nothing was found is the one closest to a nearby bog.

Brush said that on August 22, he and Dr. Nick Kardulias, chair of the archaeology program at the College of Wooster, and colleagues found a mastodon tooth while preparing the site for Saturday’s excavation.

The plans for this excavation began last year when a farmer spotted what looked like an unusual rock while walking along a newly installed drainage ditch on one of his soybean fields.   After a light cleaning, the rock turned out to be the crown of a mastodon tooth.

 In a December 3, 2013 posting on the Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog, Bill Pickard said that, “A little further investigation turned up more tooth fragments as well as fragments of the mandible or lower jaw bone. While not every day occurrences, isolated mammoth and mastodon teeth do turn up from time to time. They are the most durable part of the animal’s anatomy and can remain intact long after the other skeletal parts have decayed and disappeared. It is also the case that teeth are shed as they become worn and are replaced by new growth from the rear of the jaw. The fact that there was more than one tooth represented in all the enamel pieces and that jaw bone fragments also turned up indicates that the tooth enamel was likely not the residue of an isolated tooth and that there may be more skeletal parts remaining. Is there a complete skeleton there waiting to be discovered? It’s hard to say.”

He said that, “The find spot was immediately adjacent to a natural pond and the tile was installed to follow a natural swale that drained higher parts of the field into the pond. The tile trench was inadvertently dug through the level where the teeth and jaw bone material were lying, that is about three feet below the surface.”

Pickard added that, “A possible scenario is that thousands of years ago the remains of a dead mastodon were somewhere not too far upslope from the pond and over time this material moved downward towards the wetland when the swale acted more like a full time stream. Eventually some of the skeletal members or perhaps the whole carcass would become buried in transported sediments near the edge of the present day pond.”

In the August 17 letter, Brush said there is the possibility that this mastodon may have been driven into the nearby bog by Paleo Indians “in order to trap, kill, and butcher it, so we will also be looking for flint tools or evidence of cut-marks on the bones.”

 In that same letter, Brush also said that the backhoe digging this drainage ditch “seems to have hit the skull.”   In his August 25 e-mail, Brush said that, “Our primary purpose in removing the disturbed soil from the ditch [on August 23] was to locate the point at which the backhoe had cut through the skull and tusks.  We are assuming that undamaged portions of the skull and tusks should be present in the undisturbed soil along the walls of the ditch.”

Brush continued, “One tiny projectile point was also recovered during the excavation.  However, since it was a Merom Expanding Stemmed point that dates between 1600 B.C. to 810 B.C., it was deposited at the site thousands of years after the time of the mastodon (+ 8000 B.C.).”

He also said that "a reporter from the Mansfield News Journal also visited our excavation on Saturday and her article was on the front page of Monday’s paper.

Note:  I got on the volunteer waiting list and will know tomorrow (Thursday) whether there will be enough volunteers for another dig on Saturday, August 30.

Mastodon Found in Ohio Soybean Field

 Illustration from "Ohio's Prehistoric Peoples" depicting Paleo-Indians attacking a mastadon.  Makes me wonder why they didn't use atlatls or throwing sticks to kill from afar.  See my earlier  blog on atlatls.

At my local archaeology club annual potluck and auction on August 21, I picked up a flyer looking for volunteers for excavating a buried mastodon near the Richland/Morrow County line in Ohio, starting Saturday, August 23. 

The flyer explained that a backhoe digging a drainage ditch last year uncovered a mastodon tooth, bits of bone, and tusk fragments.  It may also have hit the mastodon’s skull.  The ditch drains water from a soybean field to a pond.    The man who farms that field discovered the tooth and bone fragments after the ditch was dug.

If the rest of the mastodon is found, the archaeologists will be digging every Saturday through at least September.

The group doing the dig last uncovered a mastodon 21 years ago.

In a book I bought at the auction, “Ohio’s Prehistoric Peoples”, the author, Martha Potter, says that mastodons, mammoths, giant elks, giant beavers, musk oxen, horses, and tapirs moved into what is now Ohio after the Wisconsin glacier began retreating, about 12,000 B.C.  “Practically all of these animals, however, had become extinct by about 3,000 B.C.,” she wrote in the book published by The Ohio Historical Society in 1968.

Potter, who was at the auction and signed my copy of the book, also mentions a mastodon skeleton found in Madison County and the remains of a giant beaver found in Franklin County, near Columbus, Ohio.  She says that, “Radiocarbon dates indicated that the giant beaver was here almost 10,000 years ago and the mastodon about 8,000 years ago.  Although none of these Ohio Pleistocene mammals have been found together with human skeletons or with man-made tools, it is highly possible that man was actually living here 11,000 years ago.  Ohio’s first human inhabitants, the Palaeo-Indians [also spelled "Paleo-Indians"], followed the movements of the animals and the retreating ice.”

The flyer says that one possibility is that the Paleo-Indians may have driven the mastodon into a nearby bog “to trap, kill, and butcher it, so we will also be looking for flint tools or evidence of cut-marks on the bones.”

More information on this find can be found on this website page of the Ohio History Connection Archaeology Blog. 

I hope to get on the waiting list for volunteers on this dig, so stay tuned!