Deer Hunter Stumbles Upon Mammoth Tusk on Texas Ranch

Archaeology and paleontology have had a productive few months. Last year, millions of marine fossils were found under a Californian high school. Just months later, a stone bearing dozens of dinosaur footprints was discovered on display at a school in Australia. Now a hunter in Texas has hit the fossil jackpot—and this time the remains belong to a mammoth.

According to Live Science, the hunter was exploring the O2 Ranch in Brewster and Presidio counties near Big Bend National Park when he spotted a mammoth tusk lying in the drainage area of a creek bed. 

Finding mammoth fossils in the West Texas region is rare. Columbian mammoths—distant relatives of woolly mammoths, which roamed North America and Eurasia and have been found frozen in permafrost—dwelled in what’s now known as northern and central Texas before going extinct thousands of years ago. After it was confirmed that the specimen was indeed a mammoth tusk, researchers spent two days excavating the fossil from the site. They wrapped the ancient remains in plaster-covered burlap to preserve it and transported it inside a custom-built frame to Sul Ross State University. The researchers have yet to determine how old the mammoth tusk is, and are waiting for carbon dating test results to trace its age. No other parts of the creature’s skeleton were discovered with the single tusk.

This isn’t the first time a civilian has stumbled upon mammoth remains. In spring 2024, an Austrian winemaker came across a collection of mammoth bones believed to be between 30,000 and 40,000 years old in his wine cellar. The chance find turned out to be one of the most prolific mammoth fossil discoveries in Europe in years.

Until the unlikely resurrection of woolly mammoths through cloning and related technologies, fossilized bones provide some of the clearest pictures of the ice age megafauna we have (unless we’re counting realistic action figures).

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