The mammoths may have been family.

Gold miners have discovered three partial  skeletons of three woolly mammoths, which may have been part of the same family, at Little Flake Mine near Dawson City, Yukon, in Canada. .

Some of the bones are still articulated (connected) with each other, Zazula told Live Science in an email.

The way the bones were found suggests "that these three mammoths were probably living together and died together very close to where the fossil bones were found," Zazula added.

The miners found the mammoth skeletons near a layer of volcanic tephra that likely dates to around 29,000 years ago when a volcano on the Aleutian Islands erupted, Zazula said.

The "miners need to remove all this frozen silt to get to the gold-filled gravel in the valley bottoms, and when they do that, they often uncover the remains of ice age animals," such as the three mammoths, said Zazula, who noted that more mammoths may be found at the mine site

"The miners will be resuming mining at this spot in a few weeks and our crews will be on hand to see if there are more bones from the skeletons," Zazula said

It’s uncertain what the three mammoths died from and Zazula hopes that ongoing research will provide an answer