Archaeologists Unearth 13,000-Year-Old Mastodon Skull in Iowa

Iowa’s Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA) has uncovered what it believes is a 13,600-year-old mastodon skull.

Knewz.com has learned that the discovery, the organization hopes, will offer insights into prehistoric human interactions with the elephant-like animals .

The well-preserved mastodon skull – a first of its kind – along with other bones in the area (which took 12 days to excavate), point to an era between 3.5 million years and 10,500 years ago when the elephants and mammoths roamed the area freely.

“OSA is excited to share that we’ve recently completed a 12-day mastodon excavation! This is the first-ever well-preserved mastodon (primarily the skull) that has been excavated in Iowa ,” the organization wrote in a celebratory post on Facebook.

The archeologists were first tipped off to the find in the fall of 2022. At the time, a Wayne County resident had informed them of someone who had stumbled on a long bone stuck in the bed of a waterway on private property .

Said bone turned out to be a mastodon femur. Despite the confirmation of a dig-worthy discovery, the team was only able to invest time and effort into the site one year later. Then, they found a tusk and established that it was very likely still attached to a skull .

After accruing the funding needed (mainly through donations), the team was finally able to commit themselves to the excavation in August 2024.

OSA notes that the respective property’s owners were as enthusiastic as the archeologists and collaborated fully.

Photographs of the dig show the specialists knee-deep in muddy water as they carved away at the large dark-colored skull while an aerial view image depicts it in a far-flung agricultural setting.

The scientists were able to establish through radiocarbon dating that the artifact was 13,600 years old.

“We’re really hoping to find evidence of human interaction with this creature — perhaps the projectile points and knives that were used to kill the animal and do the initial butchering,” said one of the archaeologists, John Doershuk, hinting at the probability that animal was hunted and killed by humans in the area.

“There’s also potential evidence on the bones themselves—there could be identifiable cut marks.”

Giving weight to the experts’ hopes, the team found numerous artifacts in the area that it thought were early human tools.

“Throughout the 12-day dig, the archaeologists discovered several human-made artifacts, such as stone tools. While dated a few thousand years after the mastodon skull, these finds are promising, indicating human existence in the creek drainage—which had never been recorded until now,” the Iowa Now website elaborated.

“Further archaeological finds, coupled with documentation of the bones’ orientation and location, could help reveal human interaction and how and why the creature came to be deposited in the creek bed,” Iowa Now wrote.

The organization also reported finding numerous other parts of the animal in the area including ribs, a piece of tusk, a front leg bone, and a kneecap.