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Paleontologists work to preserve the skeleton of a mammoth that was discovered at the construction site of the new Mexico City airport at the military base in Santa Lucía, Mexico, on Thursday, September 3, 2020. Image: AP / Marco Ugarte
MEXICO CITY (AP) – The number of mammoth skeletons recovered from an airport construction site north of Mexico City has risen to at least 200, and many remain to be excavated, experts said Thursday.
Archaeologists hope that the site that has become “central mammoth” – the shores of an ancient lake bed that attracted and trapped mammoths in its swampy soil – may help solve the riddle of their extinction.
Experts said finds are still being made at the site, including signs that humans may have made tools from the bones of heavy animals that died between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.
There are so many mammoths on the site of the new St. Lucia airport that observers have to accompany every bulldozer that digs into the ground to ensure that work stops when the mammoth bones are discovered.
“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 the animals that became extinct in the Americas. The site is only 20 kilometers (12 miles) from man-made pits, essentially shallow mammoth traps, which were dug by the early inhabitants to catch and kill dozens of mammoths.
Paleontologists work to preserve the skeleton of a mammoth that was discovered at the construction site of the new Mexico City airport at the military base in Santa Lucía, Mexico, on Thursday, September 3, 2020. Image: AP / Marco Ugarte
Manzanilla López said evidence is beginning to emerge suggesting that even if the mammoths at the airport possibly died a natural death after being trapped in the mud of the ancient lake bed, their remains may have been carved by humans, something like those found. in the mammoth. -trapped in the San Antonio Xahuento farmhouse, in the nearby town of Tultepec.
While tests are still being conducted on mammoth bones to try to find potential slaughter marks, archaeologists have found dozens of mammoth bone tools, usually shafts used to hold cutting tools or implements, such as those at Tultepec.
“Here we have found evidence that we have the same type of tools, but until we can do the laboratory studies to see the marks of these tools or possible tools, we cannot say that we have evidence that is well founded,” Manzanilla López said.
The paleontologist Joaquín Arroyo Cabrales said that the airport site “will be a very important site to test hypotheses” about the mass extinction of mammoths.
“What caused the extinction of these animals, everywhere there is a debate, be it climate change or the presence of humans,” said Arroyo Cabrales. “I think in the end the decision will be that there was a synergy effect between climate change and human presence.”
Ashley Leger, a paleontologist at California-based Cogstone Resource Management who was not involved in the excavation, noted that such clusters of natural death “are rare. A very specific set of conditions must be met that allow a collection of remains in an area but are also preserved as fossils. There has to be a means for them to be buried quickly and experience low oxygen levels. “
The site near Mexico City now appears to have surpassed the Mammoth Site in Hot Springs South Dakota, which has around 61 sets of remains, as the world’s largest find of mammoth bones. Large concentrations have also been found in Siberia and in the La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles.
Paleontologists work to preserve the skeleton of a mammoth that was discovered at the construction site of the new Mexico City airport at the military base in Santa Lucía, Mexico, on Thursday, September 3, 2020. Image: AP / Marco Ugarte
For now, mammoths appear to be everywhere on the site and the findings may slow, but not stop, work on the new airport.
Mexican Army Captain Jesús Cantoral, who oversees efforts to preserve the remains at the army-led construction site, said “a large number of excavation sites” are still pending detailed study and that observers must accompany to backhoes and bulldozers every time they break through the dirt. in a new place.
The project is so big, he said, that machines can go to work elsewhere while archaeologists study an area. The airport project is scheduled for completion in 2022, at which point excavation will be completed. Ib
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