Discovering mammoth bones near Paris

French archaeologists found an almost intact mammoth skeleton from the Ice Age in the countryside of Paris.

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Picture 1 of Discovering mammoth bones near Paris
The mammoth skeleton dates from 200,000 to 500,000 years and is almost intact.

Gregory Bayle, a French archaeologist, and his colleagues accidentally saw huge bones when they unearthed the remains of the Romans at a quarry near the city of Changis-sur-Marne, which is located far from Paris. about 30km to the east, AFP reported. Helmut, the name of the elephant, lived 20 to 30 years before dying and was 2.7m high. The skeleton dates from 200,000 to 500,000 years. It is one of four nearly intact mammoth bones ever found in France.

The archaeological team said that Helmut could die from being stuck in mud or drowning. Two small and sharp pieces of stone are mixed with bones. Their presence shows that the ancients did an action on the skeleton, but they did not kill the elephant.

"We speculate that a group of Neanderthals used sharp stones to cut elephant meat after it died , " Bayle said.

If the Bayle group's hypothesis is proven, this is the most obvious evidence of Neanderthal interaction with mammoths in Europe.

Mammoths have disappeared forever in Western Europe from about 10,000 years ago. Scientists believe that they are extinct due to hunting and climate change. About 140 ice mammoths were found in the Siberia region of Russia.