It’s a mammoth discovery.
Bones from at least 200 mammoths have been discovered outside Mexico City, the Associated Press reported. Archaeologists expect to find many more.
Meanwhile, construction crews are attempting to build a new airport at the site, but they keep finding mammoth bones in their way, according to the AP. The number of mammoths is so mammoth that an archaeological observer is present each time new ground is broken to ensure that no bones are destroyed.
Dubbed “mammoth central,” the Mexico City site is now the largest collection of dead mammoths in the world, the AP reported. Earlier this year, the skeleton count was at 60 before the summer’s mammoth increase.
Researchers hope that the site will help explain mammoths’ extinction, which was completed about 4,000 years ago but is still debated among scientists. The giant beasts shared the Earth with humans before their untimely demise.
In November 2019, man-built mammoth traps were discovered about 12 miles from the current mass mammoth grave. Archaeologists suspect, however, that the airport mammoths waded into a shallow, ancient lake and were trapped naturally, not by humans.
The new Santa Lucia airport, which is being built atop the mammoth grave, is scheduled for completion in 2022. Construction bosses told the AP that the site is so big, their workers just start digging elsewhere if they stumble across more mammoth bones. The project has been slowed, but not stopped, by all the mammoths.
It is, after all, a mammoth project.
