It took Michigan contractor Daniel LaPoint Jr. and his neighbor Eric Witzke four days to dig up bones in his backyard that he thought were from a dinosaur.
But what he actually found were the remains of a 37-year-old male mastodon, it was determined by the director of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology.
Daniel Fisher, director of the museum, made several trips to Bellevue Township, Mich., to analyze the fossilized leg, hip and rib bones belonging to the mastodon, according to Tech Times. The mastodon is a distant relative of the elephant.
The size of the prize backyard finding was surprising to Fisher, whose museum will study the bones and put them on display.
There have been 330 bone discoveries made in the state, but he has rarely seen a collective finding of rib, shoulder, hip, leg and pieces of mastodon vertebrae and skull.
Previous finds have been a tooth or a tusk, with most findings occurring in the southern half of the state.
Fisher said the bones show tool marks so it is believed the animal was butchered and buried by humans.
The bones are placed at 10,000 to 14,000 years old. A more definite age will be provided once the bones are thoroughly examined at the museum.
But in the meantime, LaPointe has brought a few of the bones to the local middle school, where students can have a chance to touch and feel the bones and talk about the finding.
