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ELLIS COUNTY, Texas — A family working on its farm got a surprise when an excavator struck a 6-foot Mammoth tusk.
Wayne McEwen’s son and grandson were digging in a gravel pit on his property when they started to uncover the mammoth, The Dallas Morning News reported Monday. The family decided to donate the skeleton to a local museum.
“We realized there was something interesting there,” McEwen said. “We knew this was something nice, not something to just haul away.”
Excavators have uncovered about 85 percent of the 20,000- to 40,000-year-old mammoth’s bones so far, which researchers said is rare, according to CBS Dallas-Fort Worth. Researchers said the remains belong to a Columbian Mammoth, which is larger and less hairy than the more famous Woolly Mammoth.
Anyone can look at this and know it's a mammoth.
–Professor Tom Vance
“Usually the bones are scattered and you get the remains of maybe 30 or 40 percent of the animal. But anyone can look at this and know it’s a mammoth,” professor Tom Vance told The Dallas Morning News. “It looks exactly like what it is.”
Volunteers organized by Vance carefully excavated the bones on the farm over a period of two months. Soon, the bones will be removed and transported to a storage facility for further research.
The Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas has been given control of the skeleton.
“Without (the McEwen’s) gift, this magnificent creature might have gone onto the auction block, never to be seen again,” staff paleontologist Ron Tykowski told The Dallas Morning News.