--- title: Bachelor Party Finds 3-Million-Year-Old Stegomastodon Elephant Fossil description: A celebratory bro gathering casually stumbled upon the well-preserved bones of a beast that predates woolly mammoths canonical: https://time.com/2887546/bachelor-party-elephant-fossil/ author: Nolan Feeney article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-17T00:40:58.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T08:27:06.038Z article:section: Science og:title: Bachelor Party Finds 3-Million-Year-Old Stegomastodon Elephant Fossil og:description: A celebratory bro gathering casually stumbled upon the well-preserved bones of a beast that predates woolly mammoths og:url: https://time.com/2887546/bachelor-party-elephant-fossil/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Bachelor Party Finds 3-Million-Year-Old Stegomastodon Elephant Fossil twitter:description: A celebratory bro gathering casually stumbled upon the well-preserved bones of a beast that predates woolly mammoths twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Bachelor Party Discovers 3-Million-Year-Old Elephant Fossil  by [Nolan Feeney](https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Jun 17, 2014 12:40 AM UTC  by [Nolan Feeney](https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/)  ## Nolan Feeney Jun 17, 2014 12:40 AM UTC Some bachelor parties are like the “wolf pack” in _The Hangover_, wreacking havoc wherever they go; others accidentally end up making [valuable contributions to natural history](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10902073/Bachelor-party-stumbles-upon-3-million-year-old-elephant-skull.html) — like one did in New Mexico earlier this month. A group of guys were reportedly hiking through Elephant Butte Lake State Park when a strange protruding object caught their eye, the _Telegraph_ reports. After they dug a little deeper — literally — they unearthed an excellently preserved elephant skull, and, thinking they discovered woolly mammoth bones, snapped pictures for the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. According to the museum, it wasn’t a woolly mammoth, but in fact something much older: the skull of a stegomastodon, an ancestor of modern elephants that first walked in North America around 15 million years ago and went extinct about 10,000 years ago. Archeologists promptly recovered the 1,000-pound remains, which they say are the most complete of their kind, and will put them on display after they finish studying them. Now, let’s hope the groom’s marriage lasts as long as the fossils did. _Correction appended: The original version of this story incorrectly described the location of Elephant Butte Lake State Park._ \[[_Telegraph_](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10902073/Bachelor-party-stumbles-upon-3-million-year-old-elephant-skull.html)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2887546/bachelor-party-elephant-fossil/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2887546/bachelor-party-elephant-fossil/"},"headline":"Bachelor Party Discovers 3-Million-Year-Old Elephant Fossil","datePublished":"2014-06-17T00:40:58.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T08:27:06.038Z","description":"A celebratory bro gathering casually stumbled upon the well-preserved bones of a beast that predates woolly mammoths","url":"https://time.com/2887546/bachelor-party-elephant-fossil/","keywords":["Archaeology","Elephants","fossils"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Nolan Feeney","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/nolan-feeney/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/archaeology/","name":"Archaeology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2887546/bachelor-party-elephant-fossil/","name":"Bachelor Party Discovers 3-Million-Year-Old Elephant Fossil"}}]}] ```