Bones’ Home : Most Complete Pygmy Mammoth Ever Found Returns to Museum Near Channel Islands, Its Former Habitat

The bones are back.

Almost two years after scientists discovered the most complete skeleton of a pygmy mammoth ever found, the skeletal remains have been returned to a museum near where they were discovered in Channel Islands National Park.

Larry Agenbroad, America’s leading mammoth expert, delivered the bones of the prehistoric creature to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. There was no question that he would be the pygmy mammoth’s chauffeur on the three-day drive from a mammoth research center in South Dakota, where the skeleton was carefully cleaned and infused with preservatives.

“I felt very responsible,” Agenbroad said, gently cradling the animal’s skull. “It is the only one in the world, and I didn’t want it to get damaged.”

The actual bones will not be available for public viewing. The museum will keep the skeleton in a climate-controlled research room with about 95% of all pygmy mammoth bones collected from the Channel Islands.

On Sunday, however, the Santa Barbara museum is set to unveil a fiberglass replica of the skeleton at a Mammoth Celebration Day. The model, made from molds of the bones, will be the centerpiece of a newly expanded pygmy mammoth exhibit.

As for the real bones, a team of specialists spent 20 months on the tedious task of chiseling the skeleton from its concrete-hard bed of sand and calcium carbonate, which had formed since the animal died on Santa Rosa Island about 12,800 years ago.

Although Agenbroad and other scientists have discovered other pygmy mammoth bones, the skeleton is the best find yet of the pony-sized creatures that roamed the Channel Islands during the last ice age.

Scientists theorize that the much larger mainland mammoths--ancestors of the modern-day elephant--swam across the channel during the Pleistocene Epoch, and that their descendants slowly shrank while confined to the island.

After months of laborious chiseling, experts agreed it was best to leave the skeleton’s backbone and rib cage cemented together by calcium carbonate.

To do otherwise would risk fracturing or pulverizing the brittle vertebrae, said Don Morris, staff archeologist at Channel Islands National Park. “We also thought it would be a shame to disturb this unique configuration.”

As a result, this pygmy mammoth will never again stand erect. It will remain as it did upon discovery: on its left side with one leg extended.

In addition to the model in Santa Barbara, a second replica, in the same death pose, will go on display late this summer at the visitors center at the national park headquarters in Ventura.

The park’s chief interpreter, Carol Spears, said that pygmy mammoth replica will roam the mainland.

“We will be able to put the mammoth in chunks in the van and take it around to schools where it can be reassembled,” she said. “We will use it to teach kids about paleontology and methods of field research.”

Meanwhile, Agenbroad, a geologist and the principal investigator at the Mammoth Site, a private research center in Hot Springs, S. D., has overseen the unearthing of more than 50 full-sized mammoths from an ancient sinkhole near the center. On sabbatical, Agenbroad has joined Morris this year to scour Santa Rosa, San Miguel and Santa Cruz islands for more fossils. The two spend at least eight days a month on the islands and have unearthed more than 100 bones. Each one adds another page to the story about the life and times of the pygmy mammoth, the animal with the oxymoronic name.

The most fertile hunting ground has been the quickly eroding cliffs and arroyos on the north shore of Santa Rosa, where the skeleton was found.

“New material is always being exposed,” Morris said. “We need to stay sharp and keep a continuous watch on the island or the material will wash away.”

Yet nothing has turned up that is as spectacular as the skeleton that was spotted by a geologist visiting the island two summers ago.

Agenbroad believes the pygmy mammoth remains were those of a male that died at age 49 and was quickly buried under a sand dune before condors or other scavengers could scatter the bones. The skeleton remains 95% complete, right down to the arthritic spurs on the bones of its feet.

During the skeleton’s cleaning, researchers found breastbones cemented in place by the sand and even two tiny bones inside the skull that supported the tongue.

“It’s remarkable how the bones were held in position by hide or sinew until covered by sand,” Agenbroad said. “From a mammoth hunter’s perspective, this is tremendously exciting.”