Construction worker sometimes find themselves moonlight as paleontologists after inadvertently digging up the remains of prehistoric creatures . In August , for example , a crew in Thornton , Colorado , find a 66 - million - year - old grownup triceratops skeleton while break-dance dry land for a public safety facility . Now , hot on the hound of that breakthrough , the Associated Pressreportsthat workers in Michigan have unearthed bones that belong to a male American mastodont that die between 10,000 and 12,000 days ago .
The discovery took place in the diminished town of Byron Center on August 31 , when contractors for local home plate building company Eagle Creek Homes LLC hit across the bones while preparing the internet site of a new housing growing .
" Our excavation crew , Bultema Excavating , was digging out a sloppy ground domain to move to another orbit in the exploitation when they discover something strange in a load of goo , " Joe Siereveld , an possessor and partner in Eagle Creek Homes , tells Mental Floss . " close testing revealed that they were some type of large clappers . "
At this point , Eagle Creek Homes touch experts at the University of Michigan to help key out the clay . There , Dan Fisher , director of the university ’s paleontology museum , " confirmed the bones belong to a 20 - to-30 - class - old male mastodon that lived 10,000 to 12,000 year ago , " Siereveld enounce .
prole initially found only three large bones , but they ’ve since apprehend up 12 more skeleton sherd , concord to Siereveld . He and his business pardner , Mike Siereveld , design to donate their growing fossil assembling — which appearsto include parts of the extinct mammal ’s low-down jaw , skull , branch bone , pelvis , and spine — to the University of Michigan for research and display .
For Mike Siereveld , the find was " a once - in - a - life experience , " he tells Mental Floss . But accord to Fisher , it ’s not uncommon to recover fossil like this in Michigan , as bothmastodons and mammothswere once attract to the region ’s lake and botany . He estimates that around two to three like discoveries are made in Michigan each year .
But occasionally , these kinds of os can serve scientists thread exciting raw conclusions about former life in the Americas . In 2015 , for example , Fisherwas calledto the prospect after farmers in the res publica ’s Washtenaw County found a remarkably intact woolly mammoth skeleton . Evidencesuggeststhat the mammalian had been hunted and shoot down by humankind 15,000 years ago — around 2000 class before humans are believed to have arrived in Michigan .
Check out more motion picture of the newly discovered Michigan mastodon skeleton below :
[ h / tAP ]
