Mammoth Dreaming in the Middle of Nowhere

Field Notes No. 3

The middle of nowhere in a June thunderstorm.

Chasing Mammoths

Mammoth bones are rare and those associated with evidence for human hunting are even rarer. In Wyoming, where mammoths are relatively common, we know of around 50 Columbian mammoth localities, 2 of which possessing clear evidence for human interaction. I discussed one of them in Field Notes No. 2, the La Prele site, and the other is Worland’s Colby mammoth site.

Humans and mammoths had the potential to interact for a very brief while shortly after humans colonized the New World 13,000 years ago. Mammoths were extinct by 12,700 years ago, leaving as little as 300 years for humans to hunt them. Accordingly, mammoth kills are among the rarest archaeological sites in the world. Some researchers think that as few as 15 exist in the Americas, though others using looser criteria might raise that number to a couple dozen. Regardless, it’s a very small number, less even than the number of Neanderthal skeletons or Egyptian pyramids.

So when ANY mammoth pops up, archaeologists take great interest because it could always be one of the rarest archaeological sites in the world. It could also just be a dead mammoth. While important in their own right, dead mammoths are the purview of paleontologists, not archaeologists. Such was the case with the 'Marquette’ mammoth discovered beneath Buffalo Bill Reservoir near Cody, WY several years ago. The site was meticulously excavated by my predecessor to exacting archaeological standards, but it yielded no artifacts and I later radiocarbon dated it to 38,000 years old, well earlier than humans in the New World.

Throughout the years, archaeologists have embarked upon similar boondoggles, digging paleontological sites hoping they will turn into archaeological sites. It remains a worthwhile project because even if you don’t find stone tools, you at least leave with important animal bones. Such is the case with Wyoming’s newest mammoth, which we’re in the middle of excavating now.

Gerardo

In January 2021, a Chilean-American ranch manager named Gerardo was excavating a water pipeline in the middle of nowhere between Cheyenne and Chugwater, WY when he noticed big bones spilling from his backhoe bucket. Recognizing their significance, Gerardo told the ranch owner, who then contacted the University of Wyoming, who is now in their second season of excavations at a Columbian mammoth site, a mammoth we naturally named Gerardo after its discoverer.

Gerardo uncovering Gerardo for a second season of excavations.

I won’t reveal Gerardo’s location out of respect for the landowner’s privacy, but unlike other sites we work on, this one really isn’t anchored to a town. It’s on a giant, private ranch in the middle of nowhere. There’s a few thousand livestock, some defunct nuclear missile silos from the Cold War, a small community of Peruvian herders, and at least one dead mammoth, but not much else. It’s great. I don’t often pine for 100 million bucks, but when I do it’s to buy a 30,000 acre ranch.

We’re not quite done excavating Gerardo, but we know a few things at this point. First, it’s around 13,100 years old, based on two radiocarbon dates determined on bones. If it’s an archaeological site, it’s a really old one. Most Clovis sites, widely considered the earliest culture in the Americas, date to around 13,000 years old. Even that extra 100 years pushes the age earlier than most evidence for human arrival to North America.

Clovis-first proponents like me are often criticized for not looking in the right places for old sites, letting our preconceived notions about the antiquity of humans in the Americas dictate where and what we dig. So if we don’t look for older sites, then how will we find them? Gerardo is old but not nearly old enough to preclude human involvement, so we gotta look.

Second, we know something about where it died and how it was buried. Gerardo died near the head of a small valley carved into 10 million year old bedrock on the west side of an unremarkable ridge. It’s head was facing downhill and it died on its left side. It’s an odd place for a mammoth to die. Proboscideans (including mammoths) typically die naturally near water sources, where they go to quench their thirst as their perish from old age. Think of those images you’ve seen of African elephants around the waterhole. Perhaps Gerardo curled up in the shade of a pine tree to spend its final hours, or perhaps it died of something more unnatural. Like a spear point. We’re hoping our excavations will tell.

Some of Gerardo’s bones in situ in 2023.

After Gerardo died, a number of animals visited the corpse to chew on bones and disperse them across the valley. Carnivores and scavengers chewed on the ends of Gerardo’s long bones, rodents nibbled on its ribs and vertebrae, and something carried an intact section of vertebrae uphill to gnaw on it from a small perch, not unlike the way coyotes do today. Only during the Pleistocene, it could have been things like short-faced bears, sabertoothed cats, or Dire wolves. Water washed through the remains and dispersed some of them a short distance downhill, and the bones were eventually buried beneath 2 to 3 meters of sand. The bones are in great shape, suggesting that they were buried quickly after deposition, likely within the year following the mammoth’s death.

Paleontologists until we find something

What we don’t yet know is if Gerardo is a mammoth kill, one of the rarest and most sought-after archaeological sites to exist, or just another dead mammoth that met its end on the lonely Wyoming prairie over 13,000 years ago. So we’re all still paleontologists right now, waiting anxiously for a sign of human involvement to rear its head and make proper archaeologists out of us yet.

There have been some tantalizing hints so far, but they’ve all been frustratingly ambiguous. A biface found near the trench backdirt. Some flakes of local chert that look alot like they may have been created with a shovel or trowel. An obsidian flake dropped out of someone’s shoe after flintknapping in camp. All enough to get you excited for a minute until your critical faculties catch up and impart their buzzkill truth on the matter: that you don’t yet have enough evidence to declare this site a mammoth kill.

I’m leaving this morning to return for another couple weeks of digging up Gerardo’s bones. Hopefully I will have retired from my brief tenure as a paleotologist by the time I write my next Field Notes entry and become an archaeologist once more.