On June 19, 1998, Dan Buesching was busy digging away clumps of tree roots on his family farm close to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Just when he was going to smash the next bucketful, he saw something that didn’t belong there: a tusk, approximately 12 feet tall, about 9 to 10 feet long, of a large male mastodon. A mastodon is a large elephant-like extinct mammal that lived during the Miocene to Pleistocene epochs. Male mastodons were typically 7 feet (2.1 meters) tall and weighed about 6 tons (5443 kg).
Even though mastodons are quite abundant in Indiana, this was quite a rare opportunity to research because the mastodon, which is now called Fred in the Indiana State Museum, had died in a swamp, an ideal place to study animals as it preserves the bones well. Nearly 80 percent of his skeleton was stuck in the soil of this ancient swamp. Skeletons found with 50 to 75 percent of their bones present are typically considered to be a good find. “When I was digging, I had no idea what it was,” Buesching said. “I had one of the bones in a bucket and realized it didn’t belong. It was quite a shock!”
Fred was born more than 13,000 years ago somewhere in the Midwestern United States. Studies showed Fred had likely stuck with his family during the early stages of his life and left when he entered his teenage years. For the rest of his short 34-year-old life, Fred roamed what now is Indiana. Every summer, he’d compete against other males for a mate. These battles were violent, and the mastodons often used their tusks as weapons against one another. Every once in a while, one or two male mastodons would die from the injuries they received in these fights. Unfortunately, when he was battling for a mate one summer, Fred was struck by his opponent in the skull with a tusk. “When they’re competing for mates, mastodons get into huge battles where one or even both combatants may die,” says Josh Miller, a paleoecologist at the University of Cincinnati, was one of the researchers who co-authored the paper studying Fred. “Their tusks are their primary weapons, and one summer, an opponent stabbed his tusk through Fred’s skull.”
The injury sadly killed him, leaving him to die at the young age of 34.
Citations
https://www.indianamuseum.org/blog-post/fred-the-mastodon-moves-to-permanent-home-at-the-indiana-state-museum
https://www.bueschings.com/about
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+a+mostadon&oq=what+is+a+mostadon&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.4792j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Even though mastodons are quite abundant in Indiana, this was quite a rare opportunity to research because the mastodon, which is now called Fred in the Indiana State Museum, had died in a swamp, an ideal place to study animals as it preserves the bones well. Nearly 80 percent of his skeleton was stuck in the soil of this ancient swamp. Skeletons found with 50 to 75 percent of their bones present are typically considered to be a good find. “When I was digging, I had no idea what it was,” Buesching said. “I had one of the bones in a bucket and realized it didn’t belong. It was quite a shock!”
Fred was born more than 13,000 years ago somewhere in the Midwestern United States. Studies showed Fred had likely stuck with his family during the early stages of his life and left when he entered his teenage years. For the rest of his short 34-year-old life, Fred roamed what now is Indiana. Every summer, he’d compete against other males for a mate. These battles were violent, and the mastodons often used their tusks as weapons against one another. Every once in a while, one or two male mastodons would die from the injuries they received in these fights. Unfortunately, when he was battling for a mate one summer, Fred was struck by his opponent in the skull with a tusk. “When they’re competing for mates, mastodons get into huge battles where one or even both combatants may die,” says Josh Miller, a paleoecologist at the University of Cincinnati, was one of the researchers who co-authored the paper studying Fred. “Their tusks are their primary weapons, and one summer, an opponent stabbed his tusk through Fred’s skull.”
The injury sadly killed him, leaving him to die at the young age of 34.
Citations
https://www.indianamuseum.org/blog-post/fred-the-mastodon-moves-to-permanent-home-at-the-indiana-state-museum
https://www.bueschings.com/about
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+a+mostadon&oq=what+is+a+mostadon&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i160l2.4792j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
