How Many Times Have You Been Digging In The Garden,

and found a bone or two?

well Daniel LaPoint Jr. and Eric Witzke found a few more than one or two, 42 in fact from a property in Bellevue Township, Michigan last November, at first they thought the bones might have belonged to a dinosaur, but it turns out that the remains were far younger, 'preliminary examination indicates that the animal may have been butchered by humans,' Daniel Fisher, director of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology told the Lansing State Journal, Fisher examined the bones when LaPoint and Witzke contacted the museum, and eventually determined that in addition to being butchered by humans, the bones belonged to a 37-year-old mastodon (a relative of elephants and mammoths) that lived roughly 14,000 years ago, the Journal reports that while unusual, finding the bones of mastodons isn't totally unheard of in Michigan; about 330 sites have been confirmed around the state, two in the past year,

and here is one that was made earlier, the fossil finders LaPoint and Witzke are keeping a few of the bones as the coolest mementos ever and donating the rest to the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, but before they travelled to the museum, the pair took the bones to a local school, where kids got to experience the fossils up close and personal, 'all the kids got to pick them up and hold them, for 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', LaPoint told the Lansing State Journal, so before you throw away any old bones you find when digging first make sure they were not buried by some long forgotten dog!