Huge Number Of Mammoth Skeletons Unearthed At Mexico’s Airport Site

Don Wood – MessageToEagle.com – Mexico’s Airport has turned into an archaeological site.

Archaeologists keep excavating and the number of mammoth skeletons, along with the remains of other ancient animals is increasing every day.

So far more than 200 mammoth skeletons have been excavated and more are expected.

Paleontologists work to preserve the skeleton of a mammoth that was discovered at the construction site of Mexico City’s new airport in the Santa Lucia military base, Mexico. AP Photo/Marco Ugarte

Archaeologists hope the site that has become “mammoth central”—the shores of an ancient lakebed that both attracted and trapped mammoths in its marshy soil—may help solve the riddle of their extinction.

Experts said that finds are still being made at the site, including signs that humans may have made tools from the bones of the lumbering animals that died somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.

There are so many mammoths at the site of the new Santa Lucia airport that observers have to accompany each bulldozer that digs into the soil to make sure work is halted when mammoth bones are uncovered.

“We have about 200 mammoths, about 25 camels, five horses,” said archaeologist Rubén Manzanilla López of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, referring to animals that went extinct in the Americas.

“Manzanilla López said evidence is beginning to emerge that suggests even if the mammoths at the airport possibly died natural deaths after becoming stuck in the mud of the ancient lake bed, their remains may have been carved up by humans, somewhat like those found at the mammoth-trap site in the hamlet of San Antonio Xahuento, in the nearby township of Tultepec.

While tests are still being carried out on the mammoth bones to try to find possible butchering marks, archaeologists have found dozens of mammoth-bone tools—usually shafts used to hold tools or cutting implements—like the ones in Tultepec,” Associated Press reports.

“Here we have found evidence that we have the same kind of tools, but until we can do the laboratory studies to see marks of these tools or possible tools, we can’t say we have evidence that is well-founded,” Manzanilla López said.

The paleontologists are busy digging up and preserving the skeletons of mammoths, camels, horses, and bison as machinery and workers are busy with the construction of the Felipe Angeles International Airport by order of President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Credit: AP Photo/Marco Ugarte

Paleontologist Joaquin Arroyo Cabrales said the airport site “will be a very important site to test hypotheses” about the mass extinction of mammoths.

“What caused these animals extinction, everywhere there is a debate, whether its was climate change or the presence of humans,” Arroyo Cabrales said. “I think in the end the decision will be that there was a synergy effect between climate change and human presence.”

The site near Mexico City now appears to have outstripped the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs South Dakota—which has about 61 sets of remains—as the world’s largest find of mammoth bones. Large concentrations have also been found in Siberia and at Los Angeles’ La Brea tar pits.

For now, the mammoths seem to be everywhere at the site and the finds may slow down, but not stop, work on the new airport.

Written by Don Wood – MessageToEagle.com Staff