While most guy out on their unmarried man party might be expected to trip into a bar , a group of acquaintance fete an forthcoming nuptials hap upon something rather more striking than a line of shot ; a 3 - million - year - former skull .
The chums were out hiking in Elephant Butte Lake State Park near Albuquerque , New Mexico , when they spotted something peculiar poking out of the gumption , The Telegraphreported . The guy then started dig until the all-powerful skull emerged . They took a few image and sent them off to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science , which quickly incite nonmigratory fossilist to check it out .
After the skull was excavated , it became immediately apparent that the specimen was exceptionally well preserved . “ It ’s almost a complete skull . The only thing that ’s miss is the bottom jaw . The bottom teeth still have enamel on them , ” Randall Gann , public information officeholder of the museum , toldMashable .
The scientists discover the skull as a stegomastodon , a prehistoric ancestor of mod day elephants that cast the Earth during the Ice Age . While the 1,000 pound specimen may look like it belonged to a woolly mammoth , paleontologist Gary Morgan was able to determine that it was a mastodont and not a mammoth due to key differences in the teeth . Morgan toldLive Sciencethat while mammoth had ridge molars for shaving , mastodons donned cone - shaped molars more suitable to chomp down twigs . ( Mastodons are similar morphologically to Stegomastodon ’s but they belong to a separate genus ) .
While it is not strange for visitors of the park to find fossils , Morgan mark the tenuity of finding such an intact specimen . “ Normally we get bits and pieces,”he said . “ A complete fogy find like this makes it much more authoritative scientifically and more helpful in understanding the evolutionary history . ”
Mastodonswere around 10 understructure ( 3 meter ) tall and weighed between 3 to 5 stacks . They journeyed to North America around 15 million year ago and roamed for many years before becoming extinct around 10,000 years ago . scientist are stillunsureof the exact drive behind the extinction .
Morgan estimatedthat this special specimen , which was plausibly 50 at the time of expiry , would have stand around 9 foot grandiloquent and weighed around 6 scores .
scientist will canvas the skull further before it goes ondisplayin the museum so as to find out more about the history of this species .
