DAILY REGISTER VIDEO: Archaeologists examine bone

It could be an elephant bone. Then again, it has some characteristics of a mammoth bone. Oxford resident Ken Lessnau said he found it last year in rural Adams County. On Tuesday, he took it to the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County to let archaeologists examine it.

Archaeologist Jim Theler took one look at what Lessnau carried into an office at the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County, and declared, "That is a bone. "

But whether the 33-inch, 30-pound object is the bone of a long-extinct mammoth, or whether it came from a modern elephant, is one of many questions that Theler, a senior researcher for the La Crosse-based Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center, wants to explore in more depth.

The structure of the bone, and the appearance of mineralization on parts of it, caused him to speculate, tentatively, that the specimen is the upper humerus from the front leg of a not-quite-mature mammoth.

The growth plate on the bone, he said, suggests that the animal was sub-adult. The shape of the bone suggests that it might have belonged to a mammoth and not a mastodon, another extinct elephant-like mammal whose remains are more common in Wisconsin than those of the mammoth.

But, based partly on a visit Monday to the Adams County site where Lessnau said he found the bone late last fall, Theler was not ready to rule out the possibility that the bone might have come from an elephant.

The site, about two miles of Lessnau's home in Oxford, has railroad tracks nearby. It was not unheard of for circuses to dispose of elephants near the places where they died, Theler said, and it would not be out of the realm of possibility that the bone came from an elephant carcass discarded from a circus train.

"I can't write that off," Theler said. "It could be a circus elephant."

-- Lyn Jerde and Michael Thompson

Read the rest of the story and get more Columbia and Marquette County news at www.portagedailyregister.com.

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[bpsapc]

Way to go, Ken! You're the man for finding this!

[nemox05]

THIS IS MY DUDE!!!!!!!!