Gabriel returns to the Waco Mammoth National Monument in central Texas — a real fossil site where Columbian mammoths and other Ice Age animals were buried together — to ask the on-site paleontologist about the bones, the snapping turtles hiding in the rock, and how scientists figure out what really happened thousands of years ago.
Chapter 01
A friendly hello
Gabriel
I'm Gabriel Gonzales, and today I'm asking another person about the woolly mammoth.
Dr. Yan
My name is Dr. Lindsey Yan, and I am the paleontologist at Waco Mammoth National Monument.
Chapter 02
Meet Mammoth Jay
Gabriel
So at first when I interviewed him over there, I only saw these mammoths, but there's a Mammoth Jay over there. I know almost all these replicas, but Mammoth Jay over there — I was wondering, have you found any other pieces of Mammoth Jay?
Dr. Yan
Yes, we have. So all of the fossils in here are real, except Mammoth Jay. She is in the collections at the Mayborn at Baylor University, and we have most of her skeleton. And what's really cool is her tusks are different lengths, and that tells us that she was left-handed — or left-tusked — because even though she broke her tusk, she still used her left one more than her right one.
Gabriel
So it's kind of like a Mammoth Q over there — it's almost complete?
Dr. Yan
Yes, most of our mammoths are incomplete, but Q, J, K, and W are pretty complete.
Chapter 03
The alligator snapping turtle
Gabriel
So over there I can see a giant tortoise right there.
Dr. Yan
This one's even cooler than a giant tortoise. This is an alligator snapping turtle. The shell and skull here are replicas, but what we have in the middle is an actual alligator snapping turtle fossil. These animals don't live here today, and we only have two fossils of them in the Brazos River — one was found around 1911, and then we found ours here.
Gabriel
It must be pretty big, right?
Dr. Yan
The skull on the end is from an adult, but not fully grown. The one in the middle is a little smaller. And there are some really cool details — you see these little round pock marks? That's where a leech attached to the shell. And on the other side, that hole is called "shell rot" — it's a bacteria that gets under the shell and causes it to reabsorb, leaving holes. So our turtle was living in pretty poor water conditions.
Chapter 04
Columbian mammoths & saber-toothed cats
Gabriel
And then I know there's like a woolly — I don't even know what that is — I know it's like a saber-toothed tiger and a flat-footed animal over there.
Dr. Yan
Can I share some information before you ask your question? So we actually have Columbian mammoths here — our mammoths are even bigger than woolly mammoths. They lived in the south, while woolly mammoths lived up north. We've got the bigger cousin — everything in Texas is bigger! And it's actually a saber-toothed cat, not a tiger. We did research and found they're not closely related to tigers, so we now call them saber-toothed cats.
Gabriel
So there's a saber-toothed cat over there, and like a flat-footed animal. Do y'all have any clues what the flat-footed animal is? I've got a guess.
Dr. Yan
Based on those ribs — ribs aren't great for identifying species — but I think it's probably a deer or a dwarf pronghorn.
Gabriel
Yeah, that's what I was thinking — like an ancient deer that could run really fast. I've seen some of those, I just keep forgetting the names.
Dr. Yan
We have pronghorns in the western United States today, and the reason they're so fast is that we used to have an American cheetah that would chase them. We no longer have that fast predator, but we still have our fast animals.
Everything in Texas is bigger. — Dr. Lindsey Yan
Chapter 05
The mammoth femur & the herd
Gabriel
And then I can see a mammoth's small bone — not the femur — I mean, it is a femur. It is almost bigger than me!
Dr. Yan
I know, right? And remember — it's a Columbian mammoth, not a woolly mammoth. Ginormous!
Gabriel
This could probably kill a human with its tusks. Over there is like a herd of mammoths that died — I can see a mammoth and then like another tusk going into its head, so it's probably like a herd of mammoths dying together.
Dr. Yan
We actually have three different layers of mammoths, and one by Mammoth J's tusks — that's a juvenile or young mammoth. So we've got all different ages, and we have them through time.
Chapter 06
The baby saber-toothed cat tooth
Gabriel
And then the saber-toothed cat — the other guy told me that y'all found like a baby saber-toothed cat tooth, which is really rare, so y'all had to use a replica.
Dr. Yan
Yep! It's very small — it would fit on your hand. This used to be under a tent because they were afraid it might get stolen or washed away. So they moved it and made a 3D copy — we 3D printed the tooth and then had it painted. It is a baby tooth, and what's cool is the back side has a U-shaped divot. The baby tooth and the adult tooth came in together and supported each other.
Gabriel
Oh, so like the baby tooth survived?
Dr. Yan
Exactly.
Chapter 07
The ecosystem & giant tortoises
Gabriel
And then there's like a giant tortoise. The tortoise must have been pretty big, since it says "giant." Over here is another giant tortoise and Mammoth Jay. I wonder why the giant tortoise was over here while one was like right there.
Dr. Yan
We think about this whole area as an entire ecosystem. Even though mammoths are what we have most of, we have at least 20 other species of animals here — tiny animals, birds, squirrels, deer. The environment was very similar to today's when these mammoths were living. And the tortoise is important because tortoises live in mild climates without heavy snowfall. The fact that we have tortoises tells us there wasn't a lot of ice here.
Chapter 08
Mammoth Q's portrait & the mystery of mammoth hair
Gabriel
And then over there I see like a replica of a woolly mammoth. Was that the actual height of the woolly mammoth right there — the painting?
Dr. Yan
That painting is of Mammoth Q. The artist measured Mammoth Q's bones and painted it life-size. The only things we don't know are the ears, the hair, and the color of the fur. Only one piece of soft tissue from a Columbian mammoth has ever been found — a single hair — and it was reddish-brown. But here's the crazy thing: if you took a piece of hair from everyone in here and waited 10,000 years, it would all turn reddish-brown. So we have no idea what color they actually were, how much fur they had, or how big their ears were. Those are all educated guesses, because soft tissue isn't preserved in our fossil record. Woolly mammoths up north were sometimes found frozen, so soft tissue survived — but our Columbian mammoths down south never got frozen.
Gabriel
Oh, so they didn't know what the hair color was?
Dr. Yan
We have no idea what color they were, how much fur they had, or how big their ears were. Those are all things we have to make educated guesses on because they aren't preserved in the fossil record.
If you took a piece of hair from everyone in here and waited 10,000 years, it would all turn reddish-brown. — Dr. Lindsey Yan
Chapter 09
How the mammoths died
Gabriel
They died from something.
Dr. Yan
We're still working on that. Originally we thought it was a flood — now we're thinking it was a drought. We have evidence that these animals were likely starving. It was a stressful period for quite some time, and we believe environmental stress from a drought was the cause.
Chapter 10
Screen washing & Gabriel's mystery fossil
Gabriel
So I see like these buckets of rocks — what are those?
Dr. Yan
We take all of the dirt from everything we excavate and then screen-wash it — we put it in screens with different mesh sizes, wash it in tubs to remove the dirt, and then look for tiny micro-fossils. We'll go through all of those buckets at some point.
Gabriel
Like teeth and stuff? I also found a tiny fossil in my front yard when I was digging. It was at least this big. I was wondering what it was — it kind of looked like a newer animal, but I was thinking it was like a dinosaur or something because it didn't look like any skull I know. It was kind of curved and zigzaggy.
Dr. Yan
We get a lot of Cretaceous shells — animals that used to live at the bottom of the ocean. Clearly we're not at the bottom of the ocean anymore! I have lots of fossilized shells and fossilized shark teeth that might be from that era.
Gabriel
I find them at the ocean.
Chapter 11
Wrapping up
Gabriel
I think that's all I have. I can't think of anything else.
Dr. Yan
Okay, well it was fun talking with you. See ya!