Archaeological Sensation: Winemaker's Cellar Yields Mammoth Bones!

 'Archaeological Sensation': Winemaker Finds Hundreds of Mammoth Bones While Renovating His Cellar

Researchers have dug up over 300 bones from at least three mammoths in an Austrian wine cellar. This might indicate that humans butchered them.

A group of four archaeologists stand over the mammoth bones in the wine cellar
Archaeologist Hannah Parow-Souchon (right) explains the mammoth bone discovery to Councillor Sonja Fragner (center) and wine cellar owner Andreas Pernerstorfer.

A winemaker in Austria has found hundreds of mammoth bones under his wine cellar.

Andreas Pernerstorfer found the bones in March while renovating his cellar in Gobelsburg, northwest of Vienna, CNN reported. At first, he thought a bone was a piece of wood.

"I thought it was just a piece of wood left by my grandfather," Pernerstorfer told the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), according to BBC News. "But then I dug it out a bit and remembered my grandfather had found teeth before. Then I immediately thought it was a mammoth."

Researchers found around 300 bones from at least three mammoths. A similar find of bones and human artifacts was made in a nearby cellar 150 years ago, according to a statement by the Austrian Archaeological Institute (OeAI), part of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Researchers from the OeAI are excavating the bones and believe the two cellars likely sit on the same ancient site, Smithsonian Magazine reported. But the new find is an "archaeological sensation," according to the statement.

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"Such a dense bone layer of mammoths is rare," Hannah Parow-Souchon, an archaeologist at the OeAI, said in the statement. "It's the first time we've been able to study something like this in Austria using modern methods."

An archaeologist uses a tool to uncover mammoth bones from the dirt floorThe team estimated the bones are between 30,000 and 40,000 years old. They also found stone tools and charcoal in the wine cellar, according to the statement.

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Researchers are still trying to figure out how the almost complete remains of the mammoths ended up so close together. One possible reason is that humans hunted the three animals.

"We know that humans hunted mammoths, but we still know very little about how they did it," Parow-Souchon said in the statement.

Humans might have killed the mammoths by chasing them to the site and setting a trap for them there, according to the statement.