Watch | Farmer discovers woolly mammoth bones in US soy field

James Bristle and a friend were digging in his southern Michigan soybean field when they unearthed part of a pelvis from an ancient woolly mammoth that lived up to 15,000 years ago.

A team of paleontologists from the University of Michigan and an excavator recovered about 20 percent of the animal's skeleton this week in Washtenaw County's Lima Township. Aside from the pelvis, they found the skull and two tusks, along with numerous vertebrae, ribs and both shoulder blades.

Mammoths and mastodons, another elephant-like creature, were common in North America before disappearing around 11,700 years ago.