Posted on 05/12/2019 3:36:40 AM PDT by vannrox
When something unexpected happens during a sewer system project, the news is not usually pleasant. But when workers installing pipes in Seymour, Indiana stopped due to an unforeseen occurrence, it was because they had inadvertently dug up a few pieces of history: mastodon bones.
According to the Louisville Courier Journal, workers fiddling with pipes running through a vacant, privately owned farm in Jackson County happened across the animal bones during their excavation of the property. The fossils—part of a jaw, a partial tusk, two leg bones, a vertebrae, a joint, some teeth, and a partial skull—were verified as belonging to a mastodon by Ron Richards, the senior research curator of paleobiology for the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites. The mastodon, which resembled a wooly mammoth and thrived during the Ice Age, probably stood over 9 feet tall and weighed more than 12,000 pounds.
Mastodon bones from the Ice Age discovered on farm in Southern Indiana https://t.co/uPmPq6jhzz
— Courier Journal (@courierjournal) April 19, 2019
The owners of the farm, the Nehrt and Schepman families, plan to donate the bones to the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis if the museum committee decides to accept them. Previously, mastodon bones were found in Jackson County in 1928 and 1949. The remains of “Fred the Mastodon” were discovered near Fort Wayne in 1998.
[h/t Louisville Courier Journal]
This is an interesting find.
Family must have been hungry.
But how did they flush them?
They had a BIG-ASS toilet ;-)
LOL
Relative of Michelle???
Seymour should keep them. They would give Jackson County a second attraction, right up there with the Sherman tank on the square in Brownstown.
I just think of all of the custom knife handles that could be made.
I did not know that a Mastodon and a Wooly Mammoth were two different critters; always thought it was the same animal. You learn something new every day. Thanks!
This is a cool discovery!
What else can it be ?
Everything can be explained by climate change....caused by man.
Of primary interest to me was the apparent fact that it was not unique. There are previous mastodon finds in Indiana.
We can read about geologic evidence of the ice age but biological evidence is pretty thin.
Obviously wiped out by the Ronco family’s RV - The Queen Of Peru while crossing the country.
A Rockford Files thing.
The photo is a depiction of a a mammoth not a mastodon.
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