Skeletons of over 60 mammoths found under-construction site of future Mexico airport

In the future airport of the city, a team of archeologists working near Mexico City has discovered the remains of more than 60 mammoths.

The bone fragments found at the proposed construction site of the Felipe Angeles International Airport date back some 15,000 years, said the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH).

Both discoveries reveal how appealing the area — once a shallow lake — was for the mammoths.

Thursday, the National Institute of Anthropology and History said there was no immediate evidence that the 60 mammoths newly discovered at the old Santa Lucia military airbase had been butchered by humans.

The remains were uncovered close to the spot where the airport’s future control tower is to be built. INAH excavators have been working at the site – some 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) north of the capital – since April last year, seeking animal remains from the Pleistocene era.

The team reported in December that it had found the bones of a far smaller number of animals at the old Santa Lucia Air Base, a military airport being converted for civilian use.

The area was formerly submerged under the Xaltocan Lake, part of the Mexican Basin, and a focal point of the country’s pre-Colombian civilization. Traps for the hunting of mammoths, thought to have been dug soon after the lake dried up, were found at the site last year.

Almost all of the giant skeletons are thought to belong to the Colombian mammoth species.

Other types of fauna, including bison, camels, and horses were also found, as well as bones of humans buried in the pre-Hispanic era and various artifacts.

“The main challenge is that the richness of fauna and relics is greater than we had considered,” Pedro Francisco Sánchez Nava, INAH’s national anthropology coordinator told Mexico’s Excelsiornewspaper.

INAH says the discoveries are not intended to put a brake on the building of the airport, and that they had little impact on the building work.

“It would be a lie to say that we have not had an influence on the work being carried out, but we are working in coordination with those responsible,” said Sanchez Nava. “We are able to continue at our own pace without having too much influence on the times of the work.”