What does one do when he finds a very odd, very large, and very disturbing thing in your backyard? Well, you do what two farmers did, you keep digging to figure out what it is. The fact is, farmers do a lot of digging; it’s part of the bread and butter of farming, turning over the soil, and creating a harvest with time. And every year and every grow season, farmers churn up the earth and do it all over again. However, once in a while, people find something isn’t just another stone in the field.
It’s something entirely different. For two farmers in two very different parts of the world, their lives changed about the same time, even though their circumstances were entirely separate. The fact is, there is a lot of history buried in the ground. One just needs to take a look at the Grand Canyon and think for a moment how many layers of dirt, soil, ash and rock have buried history millions and millions of years before we ever lived. While we many never see many of those memories normally, once in a while something gets uncovered at the surface that changes everything.
Reaching Christmas Day in 2015, one farmer decided to reflect on everything that happened in his life so far and to be thankful for it. So, Jose Nievas took a walk around his Argentinian home and perused his ranch to do a bit of meditating in silence on his good fortune. At one point, near a stream on the property, Jose noticed something odd. It was round, looked like a big boulder, and it was protruding from the stream bank. Curious, Jose got closer to get a better look.
Up close the farmer realized he had just discovered something very special. It wasn’t a boulder by any means, but it was very, very old. Wiggling around the round object, Jose tried to remove more of the mud and dirt, but it didn’t help.
Jose hollered for his wife.
Maybe she had a better idea. The two of them worked for hours trying to clean and identify the round object, and surprisingly for not being archaeologists, the two did not damage the object at all.
As the work and clean and excavating by the husband and wife continued, they realized they had a huge find, literally.
But the scope of the item was well beyond them in terms of anything they could do in their own to release the object from the ground. So, Jose and his wife decided it was time to call in help.
They rang the local police.
Soon enough, the whole local town showed up to see what Jose had found on his ranch, but nobody had a clue what it was. It wasn’t anything the police had ever seen, but true enough a dog figured out the most likely nature of it.
Jose’s dog started reacting to the object. Smelling, growling, barking and getting closer the dog’s behavior started telling folks what they were looking at wasn’t part of the earth. Dogs don’t bark at stones or mud.
But they do react to other animals and creatures. That clued the police to get some more help, but from an expert this time.
Sure enough, two local archaeologists were found and brought to the site to examine the find. Archaeologists often spend a lot of time discussing differences and interpretations with variations.
However, these two agreed on one thing right away – what Jose had found was very, very old, from a different time period altogether. In layman terms, that meant it was millions of years old. They also agreed with Jose’s original conclusion that not much was going to be figured out on the side of the creek.
The object needed to be removed, cleaned off and examined in lab to be sure. However, as soon as anyone tried to move the object, everybody agreed on the third fact – it was damn heavy. At the lab more became clear. The first samples confirmed the nature of the object.
It was a very hard, very old type of turtle-like shell. And, it was extremely large as well. Jose could have told them that. And, halfway around the world something else was happening at the same time.
The Archaeologists had a lot to work with back at the lab.
They already had a notable collection of fossils and plenty of research on hand to compare the large round find to scientifically. What no one was expecting, however, was that the discovery in Argentina would have a specific connection to a similar find halfway around the world to the north in Michigan, United States.
Another farmer in Michigan, one James Bristle, also found something odd on his farm too.
The timing of the find was entirely coincidental, but it was odd that it occurred on almost the same days that Jose found his object in Argentina. James had no connection to anyone in Argentina and sure didn't plan his discovery to happen at the same time either.
James Bristle was originally busy probing his farm for a good place to run a natural gas line. He had a soy field on part of the property that barely got any use and looked like a good candidate.
So out came the heavy equipment and backhoe to dig a proper trench. Backhoes are pretty effective.
They are smaller than full-size cranes and dozers, easy to move around, and can dig a proper trench in no time flat. Further, James had a reason to move it with the project; October was not far off with snow, and that meant frozen ground and no ability to work. So, time was ticking.
Sure enough, James eventually hit something of substance. Boulders were an occasional problem, but this didn’t feel like rock. Something was off.
James got out of the backhoe and took a closer look. Sure enough, James realized something was definitely different. He started digging by hand and realized he had a sizable object on his hands with a very smooth surface. But it wasn’t stone, and it wasn’t a tree root or burl.
James had seen his share of nature, and he realized he was dealing with something made of bone. Natural, animal, but it wasn’t familiar.
This bone-thing was huge and didn’t look like any animal James remembered the shape of. The item was huge, far bigger than normal size creature, but the bone shape did resemble a rib. James go so involved with what he was digging, he kept uncovering more and more.
Going south back in Argentina a bit more was now available in terms of information. The scientists and researchers who had been working on Jose’s find arrived at a conclusion. Jose had definitely found a very, very old fossil.
It was from a glyptodon to be exact. The creature was from the dinosaur period, and pretty much looked like a jumbo version of an armadillo.
In the meantime, James was getting help up north in Michigan and finding more and more.
Now he had found a second bone. The hole in James far was getting bigger; the crew was now 10 feet below ground level, and he was no longer dealing with a trench.
It was a full-blown excavation site with people working all over to figure what was there.
Like Jose’s neighborhood, James’ local town was all excited about the find, enough that local news crews started showing up to get a story.
And then a skull was found, along with tusks the size of a grown person connected to it. James had stumbled on something that was looking more and more like a full-grown mammoth. The University of Michigan was now invited to take a look, courtesy of James’ invitation.
One Professor Daniel Fisher responded. In the meantime everyone local was wondering how the heck an elephant ended up buried in Michigan and on a farm for that matter.
Fisher was a good pick if anyone was going to take a look at what James had underneath his farm. Daniel Fisher was the head of the University’s Paleontology Museum. Within the same day of the call, the Professor and his crew of graduate students were on site getting their first look.
They might as well have been little kids in a candy shop. They were giddy with excitement at what was already obvious to them.
The bones were indeed a wooly mammoth, and just about everything was intact and together.
Now came the challenge of how to extract them from the ground without breaking anything. After a number of hours of work and some close calls, everything was on the back of a truckbed, tied down, and moving to the lab.
James was a very practical farmer, and he could find ways to do a lot with a lot of things. However, a fossil definitely wasn’t on his list of things that had utility on his farm, and definitely not a mammoth skeleton fossil set. So, James did what any farmer would do with something not useful – he gave it away. James let the University team take ownership of the entire mammoth fossil collection, and it was huge reward for all their work excavating it and moving the find to the lab.
Now the University would have its very own mammoth collection to study and research for years to come. But first they had to get it out of the muddy hole.
The University team figured they had all the equipment needed to pull something heavy out of a 10 foot hole. All they had to do was use cables and straps to lift the skull using the backhoe.
Brilliant! So with plenty of nylon straps out of the hole came a big mammoth skull with huge tusks attached. And it all went smooth until one last moment.
One of the supporting straps carrying the skull and tusks snapped just as the assembly was nearing the truck bed it would sit on. Everyone held their breath.
Fortunately, the rest of the supports stayed secure and intact. The fear passed and the skull assembly reached its destination.
No one in the dinosaur and paleo-scientific academia were ready for two finds by two farmers at the same time. James Bristles' mammoth was a big surprise for everyone. As for Jose, his find too made a difference.
The glyptodon was a huge breakthrough in local fossil research, adding to the science of understanding yet another of the ancient creatures that existing during the dinosaur age.
Argentina is not a known hotbed for glyptodon fossils by any means. In fact, they have been found everywhere else in 100 years, but South America and the lower part was extremely rare for the location and fossil type.
The glyptodon was a walking armory of durability and defense from attack.
And it was also one of the dinosaur age versions of a turtle. They seemed to have lasted during a transition phase between dinosaurs and humans, and a good amount of research is now arguing it was humans that wiped them out.
The shell was a great defense from animal predators, but it may have been the ultimate reason humans targeted the creature. The shell was so big, it made a perfect hard shelter for early humans to use as a small home.
Today, the closest thing resembling a glyptodon would be the humble and small armadillo.
With its armored body, reptilian snout and furry underbody, the armadillo is very much a related species in the same line as what originally produced the bigger ancestor. And, technically, both were and are mammals.
While the glyptodon did come from South America, it spread far and wide, as far north as Guatamala. The one that Jose found, however, wasn't going to get that chance when it was alive. It likely got stuck in the mud during a storm and drowned.
The body disappeared a long time ago, but the shell fossilized buried in the mud.
The fellows back at the University of Michigan were quite busy with the mammoth fossil set from Bristles farm. The more they kept analyzing and digging through the various bones, the more they kept wondering how the mammoth ended up in what would be thousands of years later be Michigan.
Mammoths also migrated from South America and moved northward, likely to stay cool versus the heating up that eventually occurred. And, as a result, Bristle's mammoth is one of 30 plus finds that have been discovered in just Michigan alone of the huge mammal.
And there had been some human influence on the fossil found in Bristle's farm. Researchers suspect the mammoth found was some kind of a kill, with the body left after the human hunters had their fill and hauled off the meat and fur they could.
Bristle's find wasn't going to end up being a carnival show in his barn, however. Having no real use for the mammoth, as mentioned before, Bristle gave the find the University for free.
Both discoveries blew away people's minds with how much had been preserved and was still available to see and study. Both fossils provided a library full of new information for researchers to work with and advance their studies. It was quite a fuss, but Jose enjoyed the Argentinian event.
And he still takes walks around his ranch to see what else might be discovered. James keeps working on his Michigan farm too, and both men show if you keep digging, you just might find something interesting.