Untold Stories Of Elk Skeleton

Seeing the well-preserved antlers, skull and partial skeleton of a very large elk that was found in northern Wisconsin was impressive enough. But what really intrigued Jean Hudson was what was found nearby - a Clovis point, a type of spearhead used by hunters from about 10,000 years ago.

Very few have been found this far north, and this spearhead may be the one that doomed the animal all those millennia ago, says Hudson, an associate professor of anthropology. Or the two specimens could be completely unrelated, she says.

If the two are linked, it would mean that the elk remains are particularly rare. More physical evidence of animals such as mastodons, wooly mammoths and giant bison exists than that of elk, says Hudson.

But decoding the secrets of an animal skeleton requires asking the same questions you would at a crime scene investigation: What were the time, cause and circumstances of death? It also involves sometimes getting it wrong, leading to new questions.

A swimmer discovered the antlers of what appears to be a prehistoric elk at the bottom of Middle Eau Claire Lake in Barnes, Wis., last summer. Matt McKay of the Department of Natural Resources in Hayward, who is assigned to the maintenance of the Clam Lake elk herd, estimated the elk would have been between 1,000 and 1,100 pounds when it was alive.

"It's a very respectable size. It fell just outside the category considered to be record size by hunters," says Hudson. "So it's almost a trophy size".

By chance, Hudson was the first archaeologist to visit the site, but her expertise matched the find perfectly. She has worked with cervidae (deer) nearly all of her academic career.

A year after the elk's discovery, Hudson has helped dig up the remains, brought them back to the lab at UWM and analyzed the details, trying to unravel the story of how this animal's carcass ended up in its watery grave.

By Laura L. Hunt


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