Michigan Men Find Mastadon Bones in Backyard Dig [VIDEO]

When I was young, I annually placed a metal detector on my Christmas list. The lure of finding hidden and lost treasure simply was too strong to ignore. Thankfully, Santa saw fit to exclude that gift every year I asked for it. I think it was for the best.

But even in my mental picture of riches that I would find underground, I never considered dinosaur bones might be part of the equation. These two guys in Michigan struck the mother lode, digging up 42 bones as they sought to build a pond in the backyard. As an expert told them, this was quite the find:

They brought in an expert from the University of Michigan who determined the bones were from a 37-year-old male mastodon between 10,000 to 14,000 years ago....Mastodons were related to elephants and weighed about 5 tons.

"He had thought the mastodon had been butchered. That humans cut it up, utilized the pond area for their refrigerator," Lapoint said, referring to the expert.

Here's more on the story from WKBN-TV in Michigan:

Right now, the land owner is thing about putting the mastodon to good use by donating the bones to museums and schools. There's also another dig scheduled for the spring (after the thaw) to see if there's anything else underground.