Prehistoric jaw, other bone fragments unearthed in New York backyard

SCOTCHTOWN, Orange County (WABC) — A prehistoric jaw was found in the soil of a New York backyard.

The mastodon jaw, along with additional bone fragments, was found in the backyard of Scotchtown, Orange County.

An Orange County homeowner was doing some work in his own backyard when he made a discovery.

The homeowner found two teeth in front of their property. Two more teeth were later unearthed just centimeters underground, along with a piece of a toe bone and a rib fragment.

Scientists say the findings will help increase understanding of the region’s Ice Age inhabitants.

The New York State Museum reports that over 150 mastodon fossils were found statewide to date — about a third of them in Orange County.

“This is one of the first teeth, yes. So he recognized that it was just sticking out of the ground,” said Dr. Robert Feranec of the New York State Museum.

The Ice Age fossil was discovered in topsoil, only 12 to 18 centimeters into the ground.

“At first we thought we’d just stick around and grab the other tooth and pull it out of the ground and that would be it. But when we poked around the other tooth it wouldn’t move and we poked kind of. around a little more and realized it was stuck on something,” Feranec said.

Stuck in the jawbone of a mastodon, estimated to be 13,000 years old, the bone fragments are now being researched and preserved in Albany at the New York State Museum.

“This is a piece of the toe that we found, and it was next to the jaw.”

The toe, jaw and a piece of a rib were unearthed near the small village of Scotchtown back in September while the homeowner was mowing the backyard of his home of 20 years.

“The property opens onto a wetland. And they told me they’d joke about, oh, there’s, there’s a mastodon in here. There’s something that’s fossilized out here. Yeah. And they’d joke back and forth like, oh, I’ll find this one day,” Feranec said.

The bones that were found correspond to a mastodon of this size – about 8 to 9 feet tall and weighing three tons. One at SUNY Orange in Middletown was found in 1972.

“We found these molars and saw most of the jaw here, a lot of the part up here was crumbled and it was in fragments. But most of this lower part into the chin was still intact,” said Dr. Cory Harris of SUNY Orange.

60 mastodons have been discovered in Orange County, more than anywhere else in the country.

The last Mastodon bone was found 11 years ago.

“It was a Friday morning and a couple of property owners came into the college because they had found something unusual on their property and they initially went to another faculty member who brought them to me because I have experience with to do archaeological digs. But it was pretty clear right away that they had mastodon teeth,” Harris said.

The priority was to get the teeth out before winter, but next spring the researchers hope to see what else might be out there.

“Oh, it’s exciting. Absolutely. I mean, Orange County has a lot of mastodons compared to the rest of the state and really the rest of the country. But that still doesn’t mean you’re going to find it every day,” Harris said.