Because high-resolution CT scanners were applied to the specimen.

Because protein analysis confirmed the mastodon origin of the embedded material.

Because digital segmentation and 3D reconstruction technology matured to the point where the fragments could be visualized in their original configuration.

Every one of those contingencies had to occur in the right sequence for the evidence to be readable today.

Any break in the chain — the mastodon dying in a different location, the hunter’s weapon passing between the ribs, the rib not being preserved, the backhoe cutting a different path, Gustafson not recognizing what he found — and the evidence would have been lost.

The bone inside the bone is here because of an improbable chain of events that stretched across nearly fourteen thousand years.