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Tuesday, November 3, 2026Nov 3

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Farmer opens barn to show woolly mammoth bones

In this photo taken Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015, using straps and zip ties to help secure cracks in the tusks, the remains of a woolly mammoth are lifted out of the ground and placed on a trailer for transpor,  as University of Michigan professor Dan Fisher and a team of Michigan students and volunteers work to excavate a woolly mammoth found on a farm near Chelsea, Mich.  (Melanie Maxwell/The Ann Arbor News via AP) LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT
In this photo taken Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015, using straps and zip ties to help secure cracks in the tusks, the remains of a woolly mammoth are lifted out of the ground and placed on a trailer for transpor, as University of Michigan professor Dan Fisher and a team of Michigan students and volunteers work to excavate a woolly mammoth found on a farm near Chelsea, Mich. (Melanie Maxwell/The Ann Arbor News via AP) LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT In this photo taken Thursday, Oct. 1, 2015, using straps and zip ties to help secure cracks in the tusks, the remains of a woolly mammoth are lifted out of the ground and placed on a trailer for transpor, as University of Michigan professor Dan Fisher and a team of Michigan students and volunteers work to excavate a woolly mammoth found on a farm near Chelsea, Mich. (Melanie Maxwell/The Ann Arbor News via AP) LOCAL TELEVISION OUT; LOCAL INTERNET OUT; MANDATORY CREDIT

LIMA TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) – A farm in southeastern Michigan has become a natural history museum since bones from a woolly mammoth were discovered.

More than 200 people have stopped at Jim Bristle’s farm in Washtenaw County since Friday. Bristle says people have been driving into Chelsea and asking for directions.

One visitor was in hospice care. Bristle tells The Ann Arbor News the reaction has “just been amazing.”

Bristle and another man were digging in a soybean field when they found the ribs last week. About 20 percent of the woolly mammoth’s skeleton was eventually discovered.

Bristle says the bones will be donated to the University of Michigan.

Judy Coleman pulled her granddaughter out of school Monday to see the muddy skeleton in Bristle’s barn. She says it’s “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

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Information from: The Ann Arbor News, http://www.mlive.com/ann-arbor