[Narrator] Larry looks for clues about the life and death of this animal. [Eggenbroad] This foot right here is pretty
unique. It's your right hind foot, kind of in this position. If you look right there,
you've even got the smallest bone in the little toe and these are bones called seismoids, to
keep the joint from going back the other way too far. So that both of these uh rear legs
are articulated in the pelvis. You can actually see the head of the femur going into the pelvis there.
One thing that's kind of exciting about this guy, and I can pick up this unit because got
preservative even in the sand, is that he's getting little arthritic spines in between his toes.
This guy had arthritis problems at least in his left hind foot and I imagine he probably had a
limp. His upper teeth are worn to the point where I think he was probably having trouble
eating enough food to keep the energy level up in his body. I feel this guy is probably well past 50.
Might have been in his 60s and I won't know that till we can see the teeth and we won't
know that until we uh we won't do that until we actually disarticulate it in the laboratory.
I think this guy simply laid down and died here and as it looks now this sand dune came over him
and buried him and he's been there until this more recent arroyo started uncovering him again.
[Narrator] In the past scientists researching the pygmy mammoth had only scattered bones and tusks
with which to draw their conclusions but now that will change. [Morris] We'll really know
what one of these things looks like when you have an intact skeleton all from one animal.
Let's say you're you're studying cars, Model Ts
and you've never seen a complete Model T. You've got a hood from 1923 ana a fender from 1925 and a
door from some other year. You know a good idea of what the car looks like because you know cars but
you've never seen a complete model t and all of a sudden you walk around the corner and there one is.
[Narrator] When they finish measuring the skeleton, Larry and the others plaster the bones
and carry them up the hill. Two days later a crowd welcomes them back to Ventura harbor.
*crowd cheers*
[Narrator] In the end a whole new world of research has just opened. Solving the mystery of the pygmy mammoth
begins here. [Sharpe] I think finding this skeleton will act as a catalyst to bring Larry Eggenbroad, Louise Roth
and I together, along with Don Morris to more fully evaluate the history of the mammoth on the island.
Each of us has a different area or discipline that we can contribute to understanding the evolution
of these creatures on this particular island. It's important to know, you know,
whether these mammoths died off naturally or whether they were
killed off by the first human populations to arrive here. The question is, you know, "what
what kind of effect does man have on his environment when he reaches a new pristine
uninhabited area?". [Roth] There may have been a very brief time period when humans and mammoths coexisted and
humans ultimately, possibly bearing responsibility for their demise.
[Eggenbroad] I think it's an exciting time. We may have a chance to find out more about
a species or a group of species or a certain time period than we ever did in the past.