40,000-Year-Old Mammoth Bones Discovered in Wine Cellar

During a renovation of his wine cellar, an Austrian man stumbled upon a discovery far older than any vintage bottle: a rare collection of mammoth bones estimated to be around 40,000 years old.

This remarkable find, deemed one of the most significant mammoth fossil discoveries in Austria in over a century, has excited researchers from the Austrian Archeological Institute. The prehistoric bones are believed to have belonged to at least three different mammoths.

The discovery was made by winemaker Andreas Pernerstorfer in the village of Gobelsburg, about 45 miles west of Vienna. Pernerstorfer promptly reported the find to the Federal Monuments Office, which then referred him to the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Dubbed an “archaeological sensation,” the site has revealed multiple layers of mammoth bones since excavation began in mid-May. “Such a dense bone layer of mammoths is rare,” said Hannah Parow-Souchon, the lead archaeologist on the project. “It’s the first time we’ve been able to investigate something like this in Austria using modern methods.”

This discovery offers new insights into the Stone Age, particularly in understanding how ancient humans hunted these massive creatures. “We know that humans hunted mammoths, but we still know very little about how they did it,” Parow-Souchon explained. Researchers are exploring whether the cellar area was a place where the mammoths were trapped and killed.

The mammoth bones are currently being examined and will be sent to the Natural History Museum Vienna for restoration.

This discovery follows another significant find in 2021, when an international team of researchers unearthed million-year-old molars from three mammoth specimens in northeast Siberia, marking the oldest mammoth skeletal fragments ever found.