Two Mammoths Beating Each Other to Death (Over a Woman)

Scientific Miscellanea

In 1962, a surveyor working on a Nebraska range discovered some gigantic bones sticking out of the ground. The Dinosaur Police were called to the scene, and they found the skeleton of a 12,000-year-old mammoth. At first it was all standard procedure, but as the investigators kept digging, they noticed that something was a little off. Namely, that the mammoth seemed to have way too many tusks.

"We're dealing with a mutant double-mammoth, or possibly some kind of land Cthulhu."

Digging deeper, they made a bizarre discovery that no one had ever seen before: The extra set of tusks belonged to a second mammoth, and the two had died with their tusks tangled up around each other's heads.

The detectives had an idea about how these behemoths might have ended up in such an awkward position: Males of modern animals such as elephants, moose, and frat-house jackasses often engage in savage head-butting contests to impress women, and they reasoned that these mammoths had (literally) joined in battle the same way. But they couldn't prove their hypothesis until 40 years later, when they ran the skeletons through a battery of modern tests.

 "Our core samples show conclusively that they were attempting to combine into a Megazord."

Dental exams revealed that the mammoths were both mature enough to enter their seasonal hormone rage, and that they died during the time of year when their murder-boners were pulsing at full power. After getting their faces tied up in a ridiculous knot, they fell and pinned each other down, exhausting themselves in their desperate struggle to escape.

Believe it or not, this painting isn't on the side of a van.

It was a truly grueling death for our two hormone-fueled mammoth teenagers, but as miserable as it sounds, they were still probably better off than the wolf they squished as they went down.