Well, this just goes to show you that you never know what you might find if you look, even in your own backyard!
A man in Iowa discovered a set of ancient Mammoth bones while hunting for, of all things, blackberries.
Huffington Post writes:
When an Iowa family first stumbled across the strange object in their backyard, it looked like an old bowling ball. But imagine the surprise when the “ball” turned out to be part of a massivemammoth bone.
The bone was discovered two years ago, and now the family’s quiet home in Oskaloosa has turned into a bustling excavation site, where the bones are kept in the living room, according to ABC-affiliate ABC5-WOI in Des Moines. The University of Iowa Museum of Natural History reportedly has stepped in to oversee the research.
“The size of this discovery is quite uncommon,” Sarah Horgen, the museum’s education coordinator, told ABC News. “It’s pretty exciting-–partially because the mammoth is being discovered where it died. And we know that because we’re finding very large bones right alongside very small bones.”
The mammoth bones, reported to be at least 12,000 years old, were found about 10 feet underground. “The conditions of the bones were ideal,” archaeologist Marlin Ingalls of the Iowa State Archeologist’s office told The Huffington Post.
Read more at huffingtonpost.com