Michigan farmer donates mammoth skeleton to University of Michigan

Jim Bristle wasn't quite sure what to do when a giant mammoth skull was excavated from his Chelsea-area soybean farm last week.

"Well, the wife said we're not hanging it over the mantle," he said Monday. "And I don't think there's a buck pole big enough for it."

The University of Michigan owes Bristle's wife a big thank you, because the Lima Township farmer will be donating the entire mammoth skeleton to U-M for future study and display.

"I'd like it to go to a place where more people can see it and we can learn more about history from it," he said. "Really it's just the right thing to do."

Bristle was digging a catch basin with Trent Satterthwaite last week when the two first dug up one of the massive animal's ribs.

"It looked like a bent fence post, so I asked Jim if he'd buried a fence out there and he said, 'no.' So then I saw another piece that looked more like a bone and I asked him if he'd buried cattle out there and he said, 'no,'" Satterthwaite said.

"Then it starts to hit you, and you know it's every kids dream to dig up dinosaur bones or something like that."

When they realized the scale of their find, Satterthwaite and Bristle contacted the University of Michigan and Dan Fisher, director of the U-M Museum of Paleontology and a professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Fisher and a team of students finished the excavation that yielded rib bones, vertebrae, tusks, pelvic bones, and a mostly-intact skull. The find was rated by Fisher as one of 10 significant mammoth finds in Michigan in recorded history.

"We've been told this could change our understanding of history in this area," Satterthwaite said. "That when they date this we could know there were humans here between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago. This could change the history books."

"Once it's cleaned up, you'll never be able to be up close and personal like this," he said. "People have said this is better than seeing it in a museum because even though you don't see how it all fits together, it's just being able to be right up there with it that's an amazing feeling."

Fisher will begin the process of cleaning the bones at Bristle's farm Monday afternoon. Cleaning is the first step to preserving the bones so they can be put on display in a less improvised environment.

Ben Freed is a general assignments reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at benfreed@mlive.com and follow him on twitter at @BFreedinA2. He also answers the phone at 734-623-2528.

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