Bones found on ranch are truly mammoth

GREAT FALLS Lee Randall had unearthed animal bones on his property before but nothing this big.

Last weekend, Randall announced that he and a crew of paleontologists excavated a Columbian mammoth 20,000 to 10,000 years old from the banks of the Powder River meandering through his ranch near Broadus. Experts hope the remains can help tell the story of how the ancient creatures lived and died.

After finding the tusks and skull largely intact, Randall said, he was awestruck. The animal’s molars were in the process of revolving a new set.

“The tusks’ size was 6 or 7 feet, by far not the biggest ones,” he said. “But even being 7 feet, they were just colossal.”

Eastern Montana is a hotbed, or deathbed, for fossils and artifacts. The region has produced several different dinosaur remains, including the most complete juvenile tyrannosaurus ever found.

The Carter County Museum, about 70 miles away, was the first facility in Montana to display dinosaurs. The museum also showcases exhibits from more recent history, such as a Native American artifact collection, a veterans room and a two- headed calf.

Randall was happy the museum helped him extract the mammoth over the past two summers: “It was a once- in- alifetime deal for me.”

He first learned of the mammoth on his property and contacted the museum after an angler walking the Powder River noticed some bones peeking out from a riverbank. After finding the spot in late summer and uncovering a few bones, Randall and a small team of paleontologists decided to let the sleeping giant lie through the winter before returning to excavate the remains.

Nathan Carroll, adjunct curator at the Carter County Museum, led the excavation.

He told Randall it wouldn’t be uncommon to find only a leg bone or a rib that had survived tens of thousands of years.

Instead, they were pleasantly surprised to land a big portion of the skeleton well- preserved in sediment, including several ribs, leg bones, a mostly intact skull and both tusks.

Carroll said there’s much work to be done before anything can be definitively said about Randall’s mammoth.

“It’s not the most complete mammoth in Montana,” he said. “But the really fun parts are there.”

NATALIE DELANEY- JOHN Isabelle Brenes, a Carter County Museum volunteer, kneels next to the skull and tusks of a Columbian mammoth outside Broadus, Mont.