JIM MCMAHON/MAPMAN ®
In 2019, workers building an airport in Santa Lucía, Mexico, discovered huge bones buried in the ground. They belonged to a Columbian mammoth—a massive creature that lived during the last ice age, between 16,000 and 13,000 years ago. Scientists have since uncovered more than 50,000 bones of ice age animals at the same site. This includes the remains of about 150 Columbian mammoths—the largest number ever discovered in one location, says Alberto Cruz, a paleontologist from Mexico who is studying the fossils.
Columbian mammoths once roamed North America. They had less hair and longer tusks than their woolly mammoth cousins found in colder regions. Scientists were able to extract DNA from preserved mammoth teeth found at Santa Lucía. This genetic material revealed that these Columbian mammoths were genetically distinct from more northern Columbian mammoth populations.