Another Prehistoric Iowa Find, Mammoth Bone Discovered [PHOTOS]
Just last week we shared the news of a prehistoric human jaw bone that was discovered in Eastern Iowa. About four days later, another prehistoric discovery was made in Iowa.
According to KCCI, a man in Wayne County happened upon a massive bone while exploring a creek. Jarod Crossman sent photos of the discovery to the news station, then an archaeologist at the University of Iowa determined that the bone belonged to a mammoth or a mastodon.
Crossman says that the bone weighs roughly 75 pounds and stands at about four-feat tall. He often explores different areas of the state and has found arrowheads and smaller items before, but nothing of this magnitude.
This is what he told KCCI:
Every time I got out walking in the creeks and whatnot, I always think, what if I find something big like this? And it finally happened. It's just ecstatic, very exciting.
You can see more of the photos here:
This isn't the first time a mammoth bone has been found in the state of Iowa. In 2010, a farmer and his sons near Oskaloosa discovered a four-foot-long mammoth femur on their property. The bone dated back 12,000 years.
According to mnh.uiowa.edu, over the next two years, "John (the farmer) dug where he originally found the femur and uncovered nearly 20 other bones, including ribs, five articulated cervical vertebrae, and an assortment of terminal phalanges. He enlisted the help of the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History to lead a continued excavation, which lasted for several more years and involved multiple partner institutions and hundreds of volunteers."
The site continues: "As of 2015 the site is thought to contain parts of at least three woolly mammoths, none of them complete. Initially, experts thought some of the mammoths were a different species, the Columbian mammoth, which was the species thought most likely to be found in Iowa. But examination of the teeth suggests that all the individuals are the smaller woolly mammoths."