KENT COUNTY, MI -- When Kim Pugno heard that mastodon bones had been discovered close to her Grant area house, she went to check it out.
It wasn’t long before she was sloshing around in a muddy hole, helping excavate the archeological find.
“This is so cool. It’s right in our back yard,” she said.
Pugno is a fifth-grade science teacher in Newaygo and planned to tell her students about the dig. She was able to touch some of the bones and helped clear away muck and water.
“What a way to start the school year,” she said.
The bones were discovered Thursday, Aug. 11 during a road construction project along 22 Mile Road north of Kent City. A Kent County Drain Commission crew was replacing a culvert when a backhoe operator noticed something red in the soil.
The backhoe operator asked other workers to take a closer look and they ended up finding two large leg bones that clearly were not from farm animals.
The discovery started a flurry of calls that brought University of Michigan research specialist Scott Beld to the site along with Grand Rapids Public Museum Science Curator Cory Redman and other museum staff. The bones are expected to be donated to the museum.
“This was a very unique situation and opportunity,” said Redman, who led the excavation.
Mastodons were large elephant-like creatures that roamed some 12,000 years ago.
Another mastodon was discovered in West Michigan in 2017 while crews were developing a housing project near Byron Center. That animal was deemed to be a male that lived to be 20-30 years old.
Related: Mastodon bones unearthed at Michigan construction site
Beld, who works in archeology for the U of M Museum of Paleontology, said the Kent County mastodon appears to be a juvenile about 10-12 years old. He said mastodon bones are periodically unearthed in Michigan, but most belong to adults.
“It’s a little unusual because it’s such a young animal,” he said. “It’s not the adult (dental structure).”
During Friday’s excavation, workers put different bones in 108 bags. People who showed up at the scene were allowed to help at Redman’s direction, mostly by clearing away mud and bailing standing water.
Beld said researchers will likely try to test the bones for a more precise estimate on when the animal died.
“We got a lot of vertebrae, a lot of ribs. We got most of the leg bones. We got a lot of foot bones,” he said.
Redman said he thinks the bones recovered Friday represent about 40-60 percent of the animal. The bones will be cleaned and then dried over a year to 18 months, then likely put on exhibit.
Because not enough of the mastodon’s bones were found, he didn’t think the animal could be reassembled as a standing skeleton.
“Very rarely do you find a complete skeleton especially of a large vertebrate like this. We didn’t find the skull or any of the tusks, unfortunately, but we found a lot of other really great stuff,” he said.
The bones were officially found in a field next to the road, so Redman was grateful the property owner tentatively agreed to donate the bones. The University of Michigan will have jurisdiction over the bones for study purposes, but they will be housed at the Grand Rapids Public Museum.
“It’s a win-win,” he said.
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