Boy Discovers Bones of a Mastodon
By RandyR
09-03-2008Heartland News in Cape Girardeau is reporting that nine year old Dillon Landewee discovered what appears to be mastodon bones. Dillon came across the unusual find while fishing along an eroded stream bank in Cape County.
The giant bones Dillon discovered are partially fossilized and look like lower jaw bones.
A curator from Southeast Missouri State University said the bones appear to have belonged to a female or a juvenile mastodon.
Mastodons once roamed the area and were large, wooly creatures. They became extinct about 11,000 years ago. Scientists now speculate that a strain of tuberculosis may have wiped them out.
Photo from Heartland News website.