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Description
South Dakota, 25,000 years ago. Surrounded by the bones and rotting corpses of his brethren, the desperate bellows of a trapped giant attract a whole host of carnivores, like dire wolves (Canis dirus), scimitar cats (Homotherium serum) and soaring teratorns (Teratornis merriami), to a sinkhole. For those that can't fly, the search for food might prove to be their undoing as well.

Hot Springs is a well-known paleontological site in South Dakota, where numerous fossils from the last ice age have been excavated, and new discoveries are still being made.

The finds include the bones of various large Pleistocene mammals, including wolves, camels, llamas, shrub oxen and the short-faced bear. But Hot Springs' most important finds are the fossils of no less than 61 individual mammoths, 3 woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) and 58 Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi).

The Columbian mammoth was the biggest beast to have lived in North America since the days of the dinosaurs, reaching 11 tonnes in weight and standing up to 4 m at the hump. They were widespread across North America south of the great glacier, their fossils have been found from Washington to southern Mexico.

Hot Springs was a former steep-sided sinkhole, created by the collapsing of a cave. Mammoths would have been attracted to this place to feed and drink or to bathe, with some wounding up trapped in the sinkhole, where they would either drown, or suffer a slow and agonizing death from starvation.

Researchers measuring the pelvic bones of the remains have determined that most of the victims were young males. This gives us strong evidence that mammoths were matriarchal, just like modern elephants. A herd of mammoths could help free one of their own from a sinkhole, but a lone bull couldn't free himself alone.

Description
South Dakota, 25,000 years ago. Surrounded by the bones and rotting corpses of his brethren, the desperate bellows of a trapped giant attract a whole host of carnivores, like dire wolves (Canis dirus), scimitar cats (Homotherium serum) and soaring teratorns (Teratornis merriami), to a sinkhole. For those that can't fly, the search for food might prove to be their undoing as well.

Hot Springs is a well-known paleontological site in South Dakota, where numerous fossils from the last ice age have been excavated, and new discoveries are still being made.

The finds include the bones of various large Pleistocene mammals, including wolves, camels, llamas, shrub oxen and the short-faced bear. But Hot Springs' most important finds are the fossils of no less than 61 individual mammoths, 3 woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) and 58 Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi).

The Columbian mammoth was the biggest beast to have lived in North America since the days of the dinosaurs, reaching 11 tonnes in weight and standing up to 4 m at the hump. They were widespread across North America south of the great glacier, their fossils have been found from Washington to southern Mexico.

Hot Springs was a former steep-sided sinkhole, created by the collapsing of a cave. Mammoths would have been attracted to this place to feed and drink or to bathe, with some wounding up trapped in the sinkhole, where they would either drown, or suffer a slow and agonizing death from starvation.

Researchers measuring the pelvic bones of the remains have determined that most of the victims were young males. This gives us strong evidence that mammoths were matriarchal, just like modern elephants. A herd of mammoths could help free one of their own from a sinkhole, but a lone bull couldn't free himself alone.