View From The Cab

By David Tollefson, Columnist

An article by Chris Bennett in the May/June issue of Farm Journal tells an interesting story. Two farmers in southeast Michigan’s Washtenaw County came up with quite a find as they dug into a field of soybeans to improve the drainage on a new 40-acre purchase. Here is the story:

Of all the spots in a sea of soybeans, Jim Bristle and Trent Satterthwaite hit the honey hole. When the pair of Midwest farmers dropped a backhoe bucket 8 feet below mature beans and felt the machinery groan, they struck a massive, prehistoric beast hidden in blue clay and released the creature from a 15,000-year sleep.

Farmland is the vault of the unseen, and Bristle and Satterthwaite made one of their farm’s most unlikely scientific discoveries – a wooly mammoth skeleton.

“A mammoth in my soybeans is the find of our lifetimes,” Bristle says, “but even now, when I’m driving or walking across the field, I can’t help but wonder: What else is down there?”

“We have a story about finding it,” Satterthwaite adds, “and the mammoth has a story all its own.”

BUCKETS IN, BONES OUT

Outside Chelsea in southeast Michigan’s Washtenaw County, Satterthwaite grows corn and soybeans. Likewise, Bristle grows grain on a nearby 565-acre operation. In 2015, Bristle bought an additional 40 acres that needed drainage work.

On Sept. 29, 2015, just prior to soybean harvest, Bristle and Satterthwaite set to work on the new ground, intent on installing a needed lift station and sub-pump. Surrounded by 3’-high soybeans in heavy dirt, Bristle steered a mini-excavator and Satterthwaite operated a backhoe on opposite sides of a 5’x5’ hole.

“We were burying a 32” catch basin, so we wanted to keep the hole as small as possible, straight down,” Satterthwaite says.

Buckets in and dirt out, their digging was clockwork – until the steel reached blue clay at an 8’ depth.

“I came out of the hole with the backhoe, and I was confused by what looked like a bent fencepost in the bucket. It was 4’ or 5’ long and several inches wide,” Satterthwaite says. 

He shut off the backhoe and pulled the odd object, a rib, from the dirt.

“Jim, did you bury any fencing around here? Did you bury any cows around here, Jim?”

Staring in wonder, Bristle paused before answering: “We both know that’s no cow bone.”

TIGER BY THE TAIL

Back on their equipment, Bristle and Satterthwaite dropped buckets into the pit to uncover its secrets.

“Jim, I see more bones on your side.”

Trent, I see more bones on your side.”

Within minutes, Satterthwaite’s bucket momentarily lodged, and he felt the backhoe shift.

“I didn’t know it at the time,” he says, “but I hit the skull, and that pulled the entire backhoe. That’s when we were certain something giant was down there.”

The next object out was a pelvic bone. “Up came what looked like a piece of tree stump,” Satterthwaite says, “but when we looked closer, there was clear honeycomb texture. No doubt, we knew we were on a pre-historic animal or dinosaur.” 

“The second piece out was the big reveal,” Bristle echoes. “Iet was obviously old – seriously old. A few years back, mastodon bones were found about 2 miles from the exact spot where we were digging, so we understood the potential.”

Bristle and Satterthwaite had a tiger by the tail. The next morning, they called the University of Michigan (UM) Museum of Paleontology and left a message detailing their find.

“I’m a farmer,” Bristle says. “I just wanted to get the tiling done and cut beans, but I also didn’t want to ignore something so important to science.”

INTO THE DEPTHS

When Dan Fisher curator of the UM museum of Paleontology, received word of unusual bones in a soybean field, he didn’t flinch. A renowned authority on wooly mammoths and mastodons, Fisher suspected Bristle’s soybean site contained far more than a few giant bones.

“When prehistoric remains are found, it’s usually on farmland,” Fisher says. “Sometimes it’s a result of shallow plowing, but in this case Jim and Trent had gone deep into the geologic record.”

“Within hours of the call, Fisher was standing at the filled hole.

“I immediately saw bones on the surface in the mud that hadn’t been recognized as bones,” he says. “No question on my mind, this was likely very significant.”

The following morning, Fisher returned with a Hydra Hoe and a fleet of graduate students armed with shovels. Buried for thousands of years in the clay of a former pond bed and protected from exposure to oxygen, a woolly mammoth skull, with both 9’ tusks till attached, came into view. The remains belonged to an adult male in its mid-40s, 6 to 7 tons in weight and 13’ to 14’ tall.

Approximately 20% of the skeleton was found, and the research on Bristle’s mammoth continues to provide valuable insights. The mammoth was scavenged, not killed, by Native Americans, Fisher explains, somewhere around 15,500 years ago.

“It’s truly a key find and shows how far back human presence goes in our area,” Fisher says. “It’s also really important to celebrate the partnership between farmers, landowners and paleontology. We can’t get the answer to our past without each other, and finds like what came out of Jim’s soybean field highlight human history on this continent.

HARD TO TOP

After the find, Bristle changed the farm name from Generation Acres to Mammoth Acres. He donated the skeletal remains to the UM Museum of Paleontology.

“I wanted it in the museum for everyone.  People don’t realize the unbelievable size until they see the bones and tusks.

Sharing a bond unique in agriculture and beyond, Bristle and Satterthwaite often recall the day they uncovered the giant bones.

“I still show people the pictures,” Satterthwaite says. “It never gets old. We still talk about it and we’ll always talk about it. Farmers love to trade stories, but ours is hard to top.”

And what about the Bristle’s soybean crop above the mammoth? When the hole was filled, what did the beans cut?

“I don’t remember the number they yielded,” he laughs, “But I promise you, we got in there fast, and the number wasn’t too bad.”

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Please contact David Tollefson with thoughts or comments on this or future columns at: adtollef@hcinet.net