Michigan man discovered giant Mastodon bones in his yard

Two men in Michigan discovered a jackpot when they found remains of a massive Ice Age mammal.

Daniel LaPoint Jr., contractor, was working in Eric Witzke's Bellevue, Michigan, yard when he noticed a massive rib sticking out of the ground, according to the Lansing State Journal. The two worked together for four days to pull 42 bones out of the ground.

Initially, the two thought they had found a dinosaur remain. However, as it turned out, they had unearthed a mastodon - a 5-ton animal that was slightly smaller cousin of the woolly mammoth and distant relative of the modern elephant.

They have donated the rest of the bones to the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology.

Experts say that the bones may have been the remains of an ancient meal for early Americans.

"Preliminary examination indicates that the animal may have been butchered by humans," University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher told MLive.com. "The scientific value is really the new perspective, the new information, that specimens like these can bring."

Fisher said that the bones belonged to a 37-year old male mastodon that lived between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago. The same time when the area's first known people settled - the Paleo-Indians who arrive some 12,000 years ago.

Fisher examined the bones while they're not at the museum yet.

"Once these things go to the museum and get crated up, you're not going to get to touch them again. It's over with and I was that kid who wanted to touch that thing on the other side of the glass," LaPoint told the Journal. "All the kids got to pick them up and hold them. Some kids, it was life-changing for them. To change one kid's life because they got to touch it, I think, is an incredible opportunity."

Michigan has been known to be the place where hundreds of mastodon bones is being found. In 2002, the giant mastodon was named the official state fossil.

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