In 1978, residents in the small community of Winameg in rural northwest Ohio discovered several bones of a mammal dating back to the Ice Age: a mastodon.
Bowling Green State University studied the mastadon skeleton, then sent it to the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology collection, where much of it still resides today.
But not every bone made it out of Fulton County.
“The landowner and his friends helped themselves to some of the bones when they were being excavated,” said Peg Yaccobucci, geology professor at BGSU.
One bone sat in the landowner’s attic for nearly half a century – until now.
A community member recently rediscovered the 12,000 year old fossil and donated it to the local museum. This month, the small community’s discovery will be displayed locally for the first time.
The Ice Age in Ohio
The Ice Age began about 2 million years ago. During that era, large ice sheets expanded and melted cyclically. Around 15,000 years ago, mastodons roamed Ohio during a retreat of those glaciers.
The prehistoric mammals are a kind of extinct elephant, slightly smaller and less shaggy than the woolly mammoth. They lived alongside those larger, furrier animals, as well as ground sloths and even giant beavers the size of a black bear.
“Much of Ohio was a really excellent habitat for mastodons and other Ice Age mammals. A lot of spruce forest. The kind of forest we find further north in Canada today would have been widespread throughout Ohio back during the Ice Age,” she said.
Mastodons were particularly common in Ohio. Their fossils have been found in every county in Ohio, Yacobucci said.
“Most of the time though, you're going to find a little bit of tooth, maybe a single bone, a toe bone or a knee cap or something. It's relatively rare to find a complete specimen.”
The fossils’ homecoming
The Museum of Fulton County’s newly donated mastodon bone will be unveiled Friday evening. Yacobucci will give a presentation on the history around the fossil and the story behind its homecoming.
She’s excited to get the opportunity to connect Fulton County residents to these prehistoric mammals. 15,000 years ago may sound like the distant past, but Yacobucci said it is a blink of an eye in geologic time and Ohioans can still learn a lot from it.
“[Mastodons and other prehistoric mammals] died out only about 11,000 years ago in response to climate change, to warming, and to potential human hunting pressure. It really tells us how quickly and how profoundly climate change can impact our habitats in the past and looking forward.”
