It’s not every day you get to touch a 50-pound hip bone, or massive molars on a gigantic jaw.
West Middle School students recently examined those and other approximately 12,000-year-old mastodon bones unearthed from a Byron Center housing development excavation site.
“That’s pretty crazy. You hear on the news that they find dinosaur bones in places like Arizona and Nevada,” said seventh-grader Hannah Reda, noting that it’s a thrill to learn the remnants of a prehistoric mammal were found so close to home. “It’s so exciting.”
Eagle Creek Homes builder Joe Siereveld and his excavator discovered more than 20 mastodon bones while putting in a road at Railview Ridge housing development, located south of 76th Street west of Byron Center Avenue. They were digging at about a 15-foot depth.
Paleontology experts at the University of Michigan determined the bones belonged to a female mastodon, an elephant-like mammal that measured about five meters long and weighed four to six tons. Siereveld plans to send the bones to the U-M Paleontology Department, and is working out an agreement to bring them back to the Byron Center Museum and Historical Society, 2508 Prescott St. SW, when research is complete.
He said he wanted to show the bones to students at West, Nickels Intermediate, and Marshall Elementary schools, where his children attend. “It’s kind of neat to come across a stack of 12,000-year-old bones on your site,” he said.
Seventh-grade science teacher Brett VanDeRoer said the bones make for an incredible learning opportunity. “For us, it gets kids excited that this stuff is real. To see something like this gets them really excited and interested.”
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