Gardener digs up Ice Age relic and mistakes them for baseballs

Experts celebrate discovery of fossilized mastodon jaw discovered this year by a man who saw two giant cloves while gardening at his home in upstate New York.

The mastodon jaw and other bone fragments were found in late September in a backyard near Scotchtown, a village located about 112 kilometers northwest of New York City, according to officials at the New York State Museum.

Robert Feranec, the museum’s director of research and collections and curator of Ice Age animals, has stated that the owner of the yard does not wish to be identified.

The individual saw what he first thought were baseballs, Feranec said Wednesday. “He picked them up and realized they were teeth,” he explained.

Complete jaw of adult mastodon

The excavation carried out by staff from the museum and the Orange County campus of the State University of New York revealed a complete jaw and well preserved from an adult mastodon, as well as a piece of bone from a toe and a fragment of a rib, as explained by those responsible for the museum.

“Although the jaw is the star of the show, the additional fragments of fingers and ribs offer valuable context and the possibility of further research,” said Cory Harris, chair of the department of behavioral sciences at SUNY Orange. “We also hope to further explore the immediate area to see if there are additional bones that were preserved.”

Officials at the Albany-based state museum said the jaw was the first complete mastodon jaw found in New York in 11 years. They noted that more than 150 fossils of the extinct relative of the elephant have been found statewide to date, about a third of them in Orange County, in the same area as the recent discovery.

Feranec said the newly unearthed jaw provides “a unique opportunity to study the ecology of this magnificent species, which will improve our understanding of the Ice Age ecosystems of this region.”

The fossils will be carbon dated and analyzed to determine the mastodon’s age, diet and habitat during its lifetime, and will be on public display sometime in 2025, according to museum officials.

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