DenMag – Burning Tree Mastodon

Ten miles southeast of Denison, in December of 1989, a dragline operator digging a new water hazard for a Licking County golf course suddenly saw a giant skull looking up at him out of the muck.
A check with the property owner led to a call to Dr. Brad Lepper, curator of archaeology at the Ohio Historical Society and a regular teacher on campus for the Department of Sociology and Anthroplogy. When Lepper realized he was looking down into a peat bog containing a mastodon skeleton, he called on local members of the Licking County Archaeology and Landmarks Society, including Dr. Tod Frolking of the Department of Geology at Denison.
With only two days to remove the skeletal remains from the muck, speed could have led to hurry. A careful, if ad hoc plan made on the edge of the excavation, helped lead to a remarkable discovery even under those pressures: the gut contents of what was also the most complete mastodon skeleton ever recovered.
Those gut contents helped make the discovery of the Burning Tree Mastodon, as it was called for the golf course where discovered, a scientific event for 1990, when the intestinal bacteria were "re-activated," becoming known for a time as the most ancient living organisms known to science, at close to 12,000 years old. They were noted in Discovery magazine as one of the most significant science events for that year, and covered by everyone from the New York Times to overseas media when they were listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.
What has kept the Burning Tree Mastodon at the forefront of "Quaternary" studies (the modern period of geology and paleontology) is the organic content of the mastodon’s digestive system. Along with causing excavators to look more closely in certain contexts for preserved internal organs, microanalysis gave the first clues to the precise nature of the diet of these awesome Midwestern creatures during the retreat of the last glaciers. Cedar twigs, grasses and sedges along with seeds of naiads, pondweed, waterlily, rush, St. Johnswort, bog bean, and swamp buttercup were present.
Even more important was the discovery of cut marks on the bones of this massive mammal, indicating human involvement in the mastodon’s death and dismemberment.
There were also hints of a butchering and caching process in how the portions of the beast were placed in what was then a small pond, likely for an emergency recovery if the hunting season went sour. The recovery of the Burning Tree Mastodon by Lepper, Frolking, and others from the area who came and gave of their time made possible a major leap in our understanding of how some of the first residents of Licking County lived and learned.
Recently, a cast of the mastodon’s skull and an interpretive exhibit about the discovery went on display at The Works in downtown Newark, a Smithsonian affiliate museum of science and technology for Licking County.