Michigan boy stumbles across mastodon tooth near home

WINDSOR TOWNSHIP, Mich., April 21 (UPI) -- When 9-year-old Phillip Stoll first came across a 10,000-year-old mastodon tooth while exploring in a creek in his backyard, he and his mother thought it might be a car part or unusually shaped rock.

Phillip found the item last summer near his Windsor Township home.

“It felt weird,” he said. “I had to see what it was. I pulled it out and brought it to my mom.”

Phillip and mom Heidi Stoll got to work trying to identify the unusual find.

“I didn’t even think that it could have been a tooth until I started checking online for some kind of match,” she said. “We saw a picture of a Mastodon tooth and said 'there it is.'"

Jim Harding, a Michigan State University herpetologist and wildlife outreach specialist for the Department of Zoology and MSU Museum, confirmed the archaeological find after the Stolls sent him a photo.

“It is a great reminder of what used to roam the country,” he said of the tooth. “It most likely got stuck in a swampy area and drowned.”

[Detroit Free Press] [CNN]