Neighbors dig up 42 mastodon bones

BELLEVUE TWP. – Contractor Daniel LaPoint Jr. has been digging in the dirt for two decades but he'd never seen anything like this.

The massive rib bone sticking out of a pile of earth he had dug up from his neighbor's backyard was gray with age. It formed a graceful, wide curve. When he saw it, he jumped down from the helm of his excavator and pulled out the four-foot long skeleton.

It looked prehistoric. One word rushed to his mind: Dinosaur.

The bones discovered on the Babcock Road property in November, 42 in all, weren't from a dinosaur at all.

They were a mastodon's. The Ice Age animals, the distant relatives of elephants, weighed five tons and date back more than 10,000 years.

LaPoint and his neighbor Eric Witzke spent four days digging up the unique find before tracking down an expert's opinion on its origins. Later this month they will donate most of them to the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology.

The discovery was "pure luck," according to Witzke.

"Just boom. There you go," he said

It's also just one heck of a story.

A historical find

Daniel Fisher, the director of the U of M museum, has made two trips to confirm and examine the Bellevue Township find.

He said there have been a total of about 330 confirmed mastodon bone discoveries in Michigan — but just two in the last year. Most of the bones have been found in the southern half of the lower peninsula. Sometimes people find just a tooth or tusk.

LaPoint and Witzke's collection includes several rib bones, leg, shoulder and hip bones, the base of a tusk and pieces of the animal's vertebrae.

Fisher has spent several hours looking through what they found and believes the mastodon was a 37-year-old male.

"Preliminary examination indicates that the animal may have been butchered by humans," said Fisher. Bones show what look like tool marks, in places.

The bones are between 10,000 and 14,000 years old. Fisher said once they've been donated to the museum the exact age will likely be narrowed to within 200 or 300 years.

Sharing the history

Fisher believes there could be more bones at the property, but LaPoint said the wet earth was a challenge to bring up and go through.

Still, the work was the most fun he's had in years.

"I spend quite a bit of money to go on hunting trips," said LaPoint. "All the sudden this became a hunting trip right in the neighbor's backyard."

The discovery awakened his childhood love for prehistoric animals. In late November the men decided to share that experience.

They took the collection to Olivet Community Schools, where middle school students spent the day getting a closer look at them.

"Once these things go to the museum and get crated up, you're not going to get to touch them again. It's over with and I was that kid who wanted to touch that thing on the other side of the glass," said LaPoint. "All the kids got to pick them up and hold them. Some kids, it was life-changing for them. To change one kid's life because they got to touch it, I think, is an incredible opportunity."

Fisher said the bones could be worth a few thousand dollars on the open market, but that their research value is higher.

"The scientific value is really the new perspective, the new information, that specimens like these can bring," he said.

LaPoint and Witzke will keep a few to display at home, but both say the memory of finding them is more important.

"Finding them was very, very cool," said LaPoint. "You know, after time goes by and you have the bones it wears off, the excitement. Digging and finding the bones for the first time, it's not something that can be replicated. It really is a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

Mastodons in Michigan

Mastodons, the distant relatives of elephants, lived 10,000 to 14,000 years ago. The animals weighed up to five tons.

There have been about 330 Mastodon bone sites confirmed by experts throughout the state. Most bones have been discovered in the southern half of the lower peninsula. Two sites have been confirmed in the last year.

The University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, located at 1109 Geddes Ave. in Ann Arbor, is a research museum that contains collections of both mastodon and mammoth bones. The museum displays bones and students utilize them for research.