What was meant to be an average day out fishing recently turned into a once-in-a-lifetime experience for one Texas woman. This June, Sabrina Solomon and a friend were fishing in central Texas when she tripped and fell — and looked over to see the bones of a Columbian mammoth.
She reached out to local authorities, who then contacted researchers from Tarleton State University and the Waco Mammoth National Monument to collaborate with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to excavate the fossils.
This unexpected discovery is now shedding light on the creatures that roamed the area tens of thousands of years ago.
Sabrina Solomon Accidentally Trips Over Mammoth Bones
In June 2024, Sabrina Solomon was fishing with a friend at an undisclosed lake in central Texas when she quite literally stumbled upon mammoth bones.
“I was walking up that hill with all the clay, it was really wet and slippery and I ended up falling, coming face to face with the specimen,” Solomon told local news station KWTX.
She noticed that the remains in the soil did not resemble common rocks. Instead, she thought they looked like a spine.
“I told my best friend, ‘It’s dinosaur bones,’” Solomon explained. “We thought it was actually like a spine to something, that’s what it looked like to us.”
KWTX/YouTubeA researcher works to excavate the fossils of the Columbian mammoth in central Texas.
Paleontologists from Tarleton State University soon arrived on the scene, along with experts from the Waco Mammoth National Monument. Kris Juntunen, a geoscientist at the university, told KWTX, “What I saw when I got here was about four to five inches of tusk… It was pretty clear this was a mammoth.”
In all, the team uncovered a skull, spine bones, and part of a foreleg bone belonging to a 40-year-old Columbian mammoth that roamed the area 20,000 years ago. While excavations are still ongoing, the team plans to transport the fossils to Tarleton State University for future study.
The History Of Mammoths In The Southern United States
Columbian mammoths roamed North and Central America during the Pleistocene, about 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago. Columbian mammoths traversed vast areas of land, even making it as far south as Costa Rica.
The average Columbian mammoth stood roughly 13 feet tall and weighed up to 20,000 pounds. Unlike their famous furry relatives, the woolly mammoths, Columbian mammoths were largely hairless. This is a result of their mixed lineage, which includes the woolly mammoth and another unknown mammoth species.
Remains of these mammoths have been found in central Texas before. In fact, Waco is even home to the Waco Mammoth National Monument, and nearly 24 of the creatures have been uncovered there.
According to the National Park Service, the Waco Mammoth National Monument houses the only example of a Columbian mammoth nursery herd in the United States. There, near the Bosque River, researchers have found the remains of at least 19 Columbian mammoths that likely died together in a single catastrophic event.
National Park ServiceA volunteer unearthing mammoth bones in Waco in the early 1980s.
The most recent discovery by Solomon adds to this tradition and reminds the area’s residents of the region’s rich geological history.
“It’s so hard to imagine them walking through your backyard, so every time we find one in your backyard, it kind of triggers the imagination,” Dr. Lindsey Yann from the Waco Mammoth National Monument told KWTX. “And even a small find like this and the other finds in this area, they really tell us about the paleontological history of this area.”