page_title: Paleontological Museum in Tocuila
section_title: Hypotheses
hierarchical_section_title: Paleontological Museum in Tocuila / Hypotheses
caption_attribution_description: English: Mammoth skull, Paleontological Museum in Tocuila, Texcoco, Mexico Español: Cráneo de mamut, Museo Paleontológico en Tocuila, Texcoco, México Deutsch: Mammut Schädel, Paläontologisches Museum in Tocuila, Texcoco, Mexiko
context_page_description: The Paleontological Museum in Tocuila is a fossil museum located in Municipality of Texcoco, State of Mexico, central Mexico.
  It displays part of one of the richest deposits of Late Pleistocene fauna in America. International groups of archeologists discovered a large quantity of bones, mainly mammoth remains, estimated to be 11,000 to 12,000 years old, in an ancient river mouth that used to flow into the Lake Texcoco.
context_section_description: The mode of accumulation of the remains is still uncertain.  Nevertheless, there are several hypotheses that try to explain it.  The first studies discussed the possibility that the mammoths were trapped by the flow of an ancient river, or a mudflow (Lahar).  Claus Siebe, Peter Schaaf and Jaime Urrutia-Fucugauchi propose the lahar originated from the Popocatépetl volcano, while the research of S. Gonzalez, D. Huddart, L. Morett-Alatorre, J. Arroyo-Cabrales and O.J. Polaco presents prove that the lahar was caused by the Nevado de Toluca.
  J. Arroyo-Cabrales, E. Johnson and L. Morett analyzed the fractured bones found in the area, and concluded there was human activity engaged in bone quarrying efforts to produce cores and flakes for future use, similar to the bone technology also seen in North America in the Late Pleistocene to manufacture tools.
caption: Mammoth skull.
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