A 13,600-year-old mastodon skull was discovered in an Iowa stream, state authorities announced this week.

The Iowa State Archaeologist’s Office said in a social media post that archaeologists found the well-preserved skull on Wednesday at the edge of a creek bed in Wayne County, at a site where they had been digging for the past 12 days.

During the nearly two-week dig, several mastodon bones were recovered, but the skull was unique because it was the “first well-preserved mastodon (especially the skull) ever excavated in Iowa,” the post said.

“Never in my life did I think I would ever have the experience of digging up the skull of a mastodon,” wrote Facebook user Dan Clark in the comments section.

Radiocarbon analysis showed an age of about 13,600 years, the article said. Archaeologists will now examine the bones in detail to determine whether there are any signs of human activity, such as cut marks.

Mastodonts – prehistoric mammals related to mammoths and modern elephants – roamed the earth as early as 23 million years ago. Mastodonts became extinct about 10,000 years ago, but their bones have been found throughout North America.

Some of these fossils have appeared by chance, while others were found by architects looking for these relics from the past. In June, a fossil diver found a large piece of tusk of a long extinct mastodon off the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Last year, a tourist on a beach in Northern California saw a gigantic, one foot long tooth, the once belonged to an ancient mastodon. In 2019, workers dug a Sewer line in Indiana found the bones of a mastodon. The loot included most of a tusk, parts of a skull and a jawbone with teeth.

contributed to this report.