Annette Schneider stands beside the approximately 10,000 to 13,000-year-old mastodon femur discovered in her yard. Schneider said that with the tibia, the mastodon’s legs would be over nine feet long. Sentinel-Standard/HOLLY SETTER
PORTLAND - When Rich and Annette Schneider of Portland opted to dig a pond in their yard, they were only expecting to get a place to cool off on hot summer days.
On June 26, they got a lot more than they had originally bargained for.
Their excavator, Gary Martin, had unearthed a mastodon femur.
“At first he lifted it up (out of the site) because he thought it was an oddly shaped log and his wife collects them,” Annette Schneider said. “He took it home and power washed it. He looked at it again and said ‘That ain't no log.'”
The femur was just the first of dozens of complete bones and bone fragments to come out of the site.
clipped from: www.sentinel-standard.com 