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A well-preserved mastodon has been uncovered in Iowa for the first time, the Office of the State Archaeologist announced this week. Part of the find was a skull dating back 13,600 years.
The Iowa OSA first learned about the dig site in 2022 as erosion helped uncover the fossil from within a river bank in Wayne County. After a 12-day excavation, the archaeologists lifted the skull of the animal, related to mammoths and elephants, out of the ground along with other bones, the office said in a Facebook post Wednesday.
Conservation work and analysis of the bones is being conducted at the University of Iowa where the state archaeology office is based, and the finds will then go to the Prairie Trails Museum in Corydon.
“We’re really hoping to find evidence of human interaction with this creature — perhaps the projectile points and knives that were used to kill the animal and do initial butchering,” OSA Director John Doershuk said in a release from the university.
At 13,600 years old, the mastodon’s lifespan would have coincided with some of the first people to live in North America. Mankind made it past the ice sheets that once covered modern-day Canada 15,000 years ago, according to the National Park Service.
In addition to the mastodon bones, the archaeologists found stone tools used by people, albeit dated thousands of years younger than the bones.
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