Where Mammoths Died
Waco site offers a glimpse into an ancient world.
By Dale Weisman
Picture a long-lost prehistoric world of Ice Age megafauna that dwarf today's North American land animals in both size and diversity. Here, on an expansive grassy plain similar to Africa's Serengeti, giant sloths, glyptodons, short-faced bears, American lions and cheetahs, saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, giant bison, horses, camels, mastodons and Columbian mammoths roamed.
Classified as a proboscidean (from the Latin proboscis, an elongated trunk), the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi, named for Christopher Columbus) was the largest land mammal native to North America. Larger than today's African and Asian elephants, M. columbi's adult males stood up to 14 feet at their hump-backed shoulders and weighed up to 10 tons.
There are two ways to experience the wonder and majesty of these Pleistocene behemoths: visit the Waco Mammoth National Monument, the largest known fossilized accumulation of Columbian mammoths in Texas, and the Mayborn Museum at Baylor University, both in Waco.
Start with a photo opportunity of mammoth proportions at the Mayborn Museum: a new, life-size bronze sculpture of a colossal Columbian mammoth bull, trunk and tusks pitched skyward, beside a female and her small calf. Created by wildlife sculptor Tom Tischler, the imposing mammoth trio was unveiled May 17, marking the museum's 20th anniversary.
“Mammoths have become a symbol of our entire region, and with the unveiling of our bronze mammoth statues, we hope to spark curiosity in the natural history of Central Texas,” says Charlie Walter, director of the Mayborn Museum.
A meticulous researcher, Tischler uses science to inform his art. “His animal sculptures are so good because he understands anatomy,” says Trey Crumpton, Mayborn's visitor experience manager. “Tom measured tusks and femur bones at the Waco site, so these aren't generic Columbian mammoths — they are Waco mammoths.”
As a preview of Waco Mammoth National Monument, the Mayborn Museum's natural history wing reimagines the actual dig site. Step onto a glass-paneled floor for a close-up view of replica bones and tusks of a Columbian mammoth — the largest cast of a mammoth bone bed ever made. Pause for another photo op: a floor-to-ceiling mural by Texas artist Lee Jamison depicting M. columbi in its grassy prehistoric Texas habitat.
About five miles west of Baylor, near the confluence of the Brazos and Bosque rivers, lies one of the most significant paleontological sites in Texas and the nation. According to the National Park Service (NPS), Waco Mammoth National Monument preserves the “nation's first and only recorded evidence of a nursery herd of Pleistocene Columbian mammoths.”
Established as a national monument by President Obama in July 2015, the site presents a snapshot of Columbian mammoths and other Pleistocene megafauna — how they lived and died tens of thousands of years ago.
The story began in 1978 when two young men, hunting for arrowheads or fossils near the Bosque River, stumbled upon something unusual eroding out of a ravine: a very large bone. They had the foresight to show their find to paleontologists at Baylor's Strecker Museum, the predecessor to the Mayborn. Experts identified it as the femur of a Columbian mammoth, a fateful discovery that launched an intensive dig spanning more than 20 years. University staff and an army of volunteers unearthed a nursery herd, additional mammoths, and the fossil remains of a camel, alligators, tortoises and other Pleistocene creatures. To protect the fragile fossils, many of the excavated remains were jacketed in plaster and burlap and transferred to the Strecker Museum for safekeeping, curation and ongoing research. To date, the Waco Mammoth site has yielded the remains of about 20 Columbian mammoths.
“Researchers are now opening up plaster jackets of mammoth bones that have been at the museum for 20 years,” Walter says. “It's like a Christmas present that takes six months to open. We're just now scratching the surface of what we will learn from the fossils.”
Anita Benedict, the Mayborn Museum's collections manager, adds: “It's like a dozen 3D jigsaw puzzles mixed together, and then you have to figure out how the fossil pieces go back together — without a picture.”
The mammoth site remained off-limits to the public for more than 30 years. It opened to the public as a 108.5-acre city park in December 2009. The community raised more than $4.5 million to build a welcome center and a climate-controlled dig shelter to protect the fragile fossil bed.
The NPS now owns and operates the 4.93-acre Waco Mammoth site, while the City of Waco owns the surrounding 100-plus acres as a city park. Visitation has reached around 100,000 a year since the site became a national monument.
For some visitors, stepping into the dig shelter can be a profound, quieting experience, bringing 60,000 years of prehistory into sharp focus. As you enter, you're dwarfed by a Lee Jamison mural of a towering Columbian mammoth. The shelter's expansive, brightly lit interior blends the airy ambiance of a museum gallery with the earthy scent of a show cave.
“The first time I walked into the dig shelter after accepting the job, I was just blown away,” recalls Lindsey Yann, the site's first National Park Service paleontologist and a visiting scholar at Baylor University. “I had never seen something like that before. It's awe-inspiring. Even though we don't know [exactly] what happened, something major happened here.”
The elevated walkway hangs over the in-situ remains of the site's only known bull, Mammoth Q, a wreckage of massive bones, a crushed skull and tusks strewn akimbo like the timbers and masts of an ancient shipwreck. Mammoth Q's articulated skeleton is lying on its stomach, suggesting a sudden death. Mammoth Q likely had a hard life, as evidenced by a fractured rib, healed over like a large knot in a tree limb and likely caused by a run-in with a rival male.
The catwalk angles around a dusty, scoured pit, some 12 feet below the walkway, where the remains of a camel and another mammoth were discovered. Scores of orange and white pails, tables and tools signify this is still an active dig site with more to uncover and learn.
“No one saw these animals back then, so we don't know what happened,” Yann says. “We're looking at the bones and the dirt to try to figure it out. Why did they all die here?”
The dig site is like a sprawling, unsolved “whodunit” where paleontologists painstakingly excavate bones and piece together clues like detectives at a prehistoric crime scene. “The original hypothesis was that a flash flood killed the nursery herd,” says Yann. “However, if you look at the sediment, we have no evidence of a flash flood deposit with large rocks and debris. Our site is all fine-grained material, so I'm hard-pressed to say it was a flood.”
A recent hypothesis by a researcher studying Waco's mammoth remains suggests the opposite of a flood: Weakened by malnutrition and suffering from thirst, the nursery herd may have succumbed to prolonged drought after arriving at a dried-up watering hole.
A larger unsolved mystery is the mass extinction of Columbian mammoths and other Pleistocene megafauna at the end of the Ice Age, between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago. Was it climate change and habitat loss or mass “overkill” by Paleoindian big-game hunters? Yann believes a combination of both scenarios likely led to the demise of these mammalian giants. Long gone but not forgotten, the ghosts of Columbian mammoths live on in our imaginations and in the fossil record at remarkable sites like Waco Mammoth National Monument.
