A group of miners in North Dakota discovered a giant tusk between 10,000 and 100,000 years old.

The first person to see it was a bulldozer operator working the night shift, who caught a glimpse of the white dot picking up a large pile of dirt and dumping it into a dump truck.

Later, after unloading the truck, the bulldozer driver was prepared to level the ground, but stopped to look closely when he too saw that white flash.

It was then that the miners realized they had discovered something special: A 2.13 m (7 ft) giant tusk that was underground for thousands of years.

“We were very fortunate to find what we found,” said David Straley, an executive at North American Coal, which owns the coal mine.

At the Freedom Mine near Beulah, North Dakota, miners excavated the shaft from a river bed about 40 feet (12 m) deep. The 28,210 hectares (45,000 acres) surface mine produces 14.5 million tons of brown coal annually.

After finding the tusk, the miners stopped digging in the area and called in experts, who They estimated that it was 10,000 to 100,000 years old.

Jeff Person, a paleontologist with the North Dakota Geological Survey, was one of the first to attend. He expressed himself surprise Because the stem would not have sustained much damage given the heavy machinery used at the site.

“It’s miraculous that it came out basically intact,” the person said.

Subsequent excavations at the site yielded more bones. Person described it as a “drip of finds” consisting of more than 20 bones, including a shoulder blade, ribs, a tooth and parts of a hip, and is probably the most complete mammoth found in the state, where it is more common. Just to find a bone, tooth or piece of mammoth tusk.

In the past, mammoths lived in areas of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Specimens have been found in the United States and Canada, explains Paul Ullmann, a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of North Dakota.

The discovery at the mine is very rare for North Dakota and the region, because many of the remains of animals that lived in the last ice age were destroyed by glaciers and the movement of ice sheets, Ullman said.

More mammoth fossils have been found in areas such as Texas and South Dakota. People have also found bodies frozen in permafrost in Canada and Siberia.

Mammoths They became extinct about 10,000 years ago According to the Geological Survey, what is now North Dakota. They were larger than modern elephants and covered with thick fur. Here are cave paintings from 13,000 years ago.

An ivory tusk that weighs more than 22 kg (50 pounds) is considered fragile. Paleontologists tried to control how quickly it dehydrated by wrapping it in plastic. If that happens too quickly, the bone can break and be destroyed, the person explained.

The stems and other bones have been wrapped in plastic and stored, and will remain that way for at least several months while scientists determine how to safely remove the water. Paleontologists will later determine the mammoth’s species, the person said.

The mining company plans to donate the bones to the state for educational purposes.

“Our goal is to give that to the kids.”Straley said.

(with information from AP)