6-yr-old from Michigan discovers 11,000 year old mastodon fossil

A six-year-old boy from US state of Michigan stumbled upon a fossil of a mastodon, that roamed Earth 11,000 years ago. boy named Julian Gagn found animal’s tooth while he was trekking at Michigan’s Disaur Hill Nature Preserve in Rochester Hills with his family and initially thought it to be a dragon's tooth, multiple media sources reported. recovered fossil is almost size of a human hand and experts from University of Michigan asserted that tooth broke off a mastodon. 

Mastodons inhabited rth and Central America 

mammals are estimated to have roamed rth and Central America around late ice , which ended 11,000 years ago. se creatures were massive and had an appearance resembling woolly mammoths. Weighing over eight tons and reaching 10 feet in length, y must have been one of largest creatures on earth during ir survival period, as per Daily Mail. 

Experts figure that mastodons mostly inhabited forests and wetlands, where leafy food was abundant and disappeared before humans emerged to hunt m down. According to recent carbon dating methods, elephant ancestors must have died out due to change in habitats, that was from forests to high altitude regions having less vegetation.

Gagn’s discovery

Researchers from University of Michigan have confirmed that fossil found in 16-acre campus of preserve is of a mastodon. Abigail Drake, from University of Michigan Museum of Natural History, said that preservation of an animal as a fossil after its death is rare as it rmally gets scavenged. 

This new discovery adds to list of or findings of mastodon fossils as gold miners in Colombia discovered a 3.5-foot long tusk of a mastodon along with its remains in September last year. Apart from this, ar fossilized mastodon tooth was recovered by a teenr near Missouri’s Grand River, just two months later, reports Daily Mail.

This week has been fairly significant for fossil discoveries as paleontologists recently discovered two new species of carnivorous disaurs with crocodile-type skulls from Isle of Wight in UK’s Sourn part. experts revealed that se species of disaurs might have been able to hunt both on land and underwater.

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