Rediscovering the past.

Was what a group of southwest Saskatchewan residents did at the Swift Current Museum Thursday night.

Eliann Stoffel, a master's student from the University of Saskatchewan, shared her extensive research about the Woolly Mammoth that was discovered in Kyle in 1964 with the listeners in attendance.

Stoffel spent approximately two years uncovering information about the Kyle Mammoth and shared her favourite experience of the project.

"The taphonomic analysis was probably my favourite because I was constantly looking for some sort of evidence humans were involved with this (the death of the Woolly Mammoth)," she said. "In doing so I came to the conclusion that there couldn't have been humans involved (with the death) because I'm not seeing the evidence."

While studying the bones of the animal she came across a lesion in the spinal region and first believed it may have been an injury from an attack by Clovis people, but upon further research, the lesion was caused by old age and nourishment.

The bones of the male Woolley Mammoth have spent the past 50 years in storage at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Regina only having been looked at once until Stoffel's project helped rediscover Saskatchewan's most complete skeletal of a Woolley Mammoth.

"They're in the annex so they're stored away in a climate controlled room. There are a couple models (of Woolley Mammoths) on display at the RSM, I believe there is a femur, vertebrae, tusk, and lower jaw with the intact molar (from the Kyle Woolley Mammoth) on display at the RSM," she told SwiftCurrentOnline.

Stoffel is looking forward to publish the paleoecological part of her project shortly, might publish an article on the lesion, and is also looking at publishing her thesis as a whole.