Mammoth Bones Uncovered At Oregon State University's Reser Stadium

Oregon State University's Reser Stadium may be home to the Beavers today, but thousands of years ago it was home to a mammoth.

The massive femur and several other bones from a mammoth were found on Monday in the stadium's north end zone during an off-season renovation, the university said in a news release.

The mammoth is believed to have died roughly 10,000 years ago, when the site may have been a bog or marsh.

“Animals who were sick would often go to a body of water and die there, so it’s not unusual to find a group of bones like this,” Loren Davis, an associate professor of anthropology at OSU, said in the news release. "We had all of these types of animals in the Willamette Valley back then."

Here's a look at the mammoth's pelvis:

And its femur:

To show just how mammoth that femur really is, here it is next to Davis:

Along with the mammoth bones, construction crews uncovered the bones of a bison and those of a horse or camel.

A type of camel known as the camelops once roamed western North America until the end of the Ice Age about 10,000 years ago.

Davis said the animals had not been hunted or killed as there is no evidence of long-ago human activity at the site.

He's planning to use the bones in class, and has saved a pile of dirt for his students to excavate.

"It’ll be a great learning experience for them, to learn how to identify extinct animal bones," he said. "It’s really an amazing find."