SOUTHERN MAMMOTHS

Sep 9, 2025

Forty thousand years ago, there was a lake north of Mexico City that attracted Colombian mammoths — the big ones: camels, horses, giant sloths — and every other kind of animal ththe carcasses of extinct animals remained and are now being excavated by the hundreds to make room for an airport on a military base. This lake was not a “tar pit” like Le Brea. It was full of sticky mud that small animals could escape. But the giants remained stuck for scientists to unearth. You could say researchers found enough to fill a museum, but the military actually had to build a museum to hold the fossils, and there still is not enough room for them! The excavations are being done by archaeologists because Mexico has plenty of those, and comparatively few paleontologists. The story was highlighted on the Science Magazine Podcast, which dives into the extraordinary scale of the discovery and what it means for our understanding of Ice Age megafauna.