42 ancient mastodon bones were found by two neighboring men digging in a Michigan backyard. The42 ancient mastodon bones weighed five tons and was found to have dated back to more than 10,000 years, reports Newsmax.
One of the men who dug the 42 ancient mastodon bones is contractor Daniel LaPoint Jr. He said he has been digging in the dirt for two decades but he had experienced anything like these bones.
LaPoint was with his neighbor Eric Witzke when he found the 42 ancient mastodon bones. He and Witzke reportedly spent four days in November digging up the bones on the property southwest of Lansing before they were able to track down an expert for an opinion on its origins.
LaPoint Jr. said he will donate the 42 ancient mastodon bones to the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology later this month, according to the Lansing State Journal.
Included in the 42 ancient mastodon bones he was able to dig up is a massive rib bone sticking out of a pile of earth from his neighbor's backyard. It was already gray with age, though it still formed a graceful, wide curve. He reportedly jumped down from the helm of his excavator soon as he saw it and pulled out the four-foot long skeleton.
Witzke said that discovering the 42 ancient mastodon bones was "pure luck."
"Just boom. There you go," he said.
LaPoint told the State Journal that it took them a lot of work to pull up the 42 ancient mastodon bones. However, they still had fun putting the puzzle of bones together.
"I spend quite a bit of money to go on hunting trips," LaPoint said. "All of sudden this became a hunting trip right in the neighbor's backyard."
According to LaPoint, he recently took the collection of 42 ancient mastodon bones to Olivet Community Schools. Middle school students were able to spend the day taking a closer look at the historic find.
"Once these things go to the museum and get crated up, you're not going to get to touch them again," LaPoint said. "All the kids got to pick them up and hold them. Some kids, it was life-changing for them."
Mastodons are known to be distant relatives of elephants. They weigh more than five tons and have been known to date back to the Ice Age. Currently, there are roughly 330 confirmed mastodon bone sites around Michigan, according to the Ann Arbor News. Most of these bones have been discovered in the southern half of the lower peninsula, and oftentimes people only find a tooth or tusk.
Director Daniel Fisher of the University of Michigan's museum told the State Journal that he believed the 42 ancient mastodon bones belonged to a male that is approximately 37 years old.
He also said that there is still a chance that more bones could be on the property, simply waiting to be unearthed.
"Preliminary examination indicates that the animal may have been butchered by humans," Fisher said. He also noted that the 42 ancient mastodon bones showed signs of what appeared to be tool marks, in places.
The 42 ancient mastodon bones discovered by LaPoint and Witzke included several rib bones, leg, shoulder and hip bones, the base of a tusk and pieces of the animal's vertebrae, noted Fisher.
Aged between 10,000 and 14,000 years old, Fisher said the 42 ancient mastodon bones' age will likely be narrowed to within 200 or 300 years once donated to the museum. He added that they could now be worth a few thousand dollars on the open market. However, their research value could prove much higher.
"The scientific value is really the new perspective, the new information, that specimens like these can bring," he said.
LaPoint and Witzke will reportedly keep a few of the 42 ancient mastodon bones to be displayed at home. However, they both say that the memory of finding these bones is more important.
"Finding them was very, very cool," LaPoint said. "You know, after time goes by and you have the bones it wears off, the excitement. Digging and finding the bones for the first time, it's not something that can be replicated. It really is a once-in-a-lifetime thing."
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