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Rare ice age mammoth bone found in Florida

04 May 2021 13:40 (UTC +04:00)

Aside from the mammoth bone, two paleontologists discovered parts of an extinct shark and the tooth of a sabre-tooth tiger that will be put on display at the Florida Museum of Natural History, APA reports citing Sputnik.

Two Florida scuba divers have stumbled upon a large mammoth bone that may date back to the ice age, according to The Orlando Sentinel.

While diving in a river in southwest Florida last week, amateur paleontologists Derek Demeter and Henry Sadler discovered a 1.2-metre, 23kg bone that belonged to a species called the Columbian mammoth.

The Columbian mammoth inhabited North America during the Pleistocene Epoch, between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago.

"[Henry] came up, and he's like, 'Derek, I found something amazing', and he's just freaking out. When I saw it, I couldn't believe it. I was in denial. It was really neat to see that be discovered", Demeter told The Orlando Sentinel.

The bone, which could be tens of thousands of years old, is now in a classroom where Sadler teaches so that "the kids are able to see it, touch it, feel it and really get a history of the natural world".