On April 12, 2000, as Lake Chapala was plunging towards its lowest level in half a century, mariachi musician Juan Santos Enciso and his family set out for an outing on the vast beach near their home in Santa Cruz de la Soledad. As they scrounged around for stones to improvise a fire pit for cooking their midday picnic fare, Santos picked up an odd-shaped object. It turned out to be a small bone from a prehistoric beast, later identified as an ancient ancestor of the elephant.
“At first I thought it was an old grinding stone. Then it started to crumble in my hands,” Santos explained as he told his story to the Guadalajara Reporter the following day.
Using a fishing tool and bare hands to dig further around the spot, the clan began uncovering more and more bones, gradually exposing the skeletal remains of a giant creature, from the hind quarters to its skull and long tusks. 
“We never did get around to eating,” wife Maria Ramirez recalled. What the couple did do was report the odd discovery to Chapala authorities. Early the next morning then-mayor Alberto Alcantar dispatched police to cordon off the area as he hustled to call in experts from Guadalajara to examine the site.
Scientists from Guadalajara’s brand new Museo de Paleontologia and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) arrived on the scene the next day, astonished to encounter an extremely rare finding: a nearly complete skeleton with all four legs sprawled out from the backbone. The position indicated that the animal may have died from the attack of a predator or getting stuck in the mucky lakebed.
Protective measures were quickly implemented to protect the ancient bones from pillage and deterioration caused by sudden exposure to sun and air. They were covered again by beach sand, surrounded by a chain link fence and covered overhead with tarps, with police put on around-the-clock guard.
By then the site had already turned into something akin to a carnival atmosphere, with crowds of curious onlookers showing up as news of discovery spread like wildfire at the threshold of the Easter holidays. Santos and his family set up camp nearby to keep watch on the goings-on and earn some pocket money hawking snacks and cold beverages to the throngs.
Scientists spent the next two months on meticulous excavations, laying out grid lines to define the study site before digging out the bones and applying an acrylic and polymer emulsion to solidify and prevent damage to the fragile pieces. At the end of the process, the skeleton was transported to the paleontology museum’s research lab.
After thorough examination, the Santa Cruz creature was identified as an adult male gomphotherium, member of an extinct genus of proboscid that inhabited North America as recently 12,000 years ago and back to 3.5 million years.
This family of elephant predecessors is distinguished from mammoths and mastodons by straight tusks on the upper jaw and shovel-shaped tusks on lower jaw. They were herbivores that commonly lived in dry wooded regions near swamps and lakes where they scooped up aquatic vegetation from the water and mud with the lower tusks.
In the heady days after the skeleton was uncovered, there was widespread talk of eventually bringing it back to its place of origin to become a major local tourist attraction. The old train station, then in the process of restoration, was mentioned as a probable home. But INAH, which holds formal custody of the remains, spelled out strict temperature, humidity and lighting requirements for mounting a permanent display. The astronomical costs involved deterred local authorities from serious pursuit in the matter.
The skeleton still remains under guardianship of the Paleontology Museum, where it is preserved behind the scenes. A replica, mounted in standing position, is the main feature of Exhibit Room 7. Last year, the “paleoalgoritmo” application for android devices was introduced, allowing visitors to access a wealth of added information as the walk through the exhibit.
Back in Chapala 15 years later, the excavation site has disappeared again under the lake’s water. The dream of bringing the mighty gonfoterio back home has been largely generally forgotten … except perhaps in the mind of unwitting fossil-finder Juan Santos, who has kept his day job as a violinist-singer with the Mariachi Aguila.
The Museo de Paleontología is located at Dr. R. Michel 520, at the corner of Calzada González Gallo, adjacent to the Agua Azul Park, open Tuesday-Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sundays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Website: http://paleontologia.guadalajara.gob.mx.