Mastodon Tooth Found By Kids In Iowa Creek: 20,000 Year Old Tooth Of Ancient Extinct Mammal

A mastodon tooth was found by four children in Eastern Iowa.

The four friends were exploring a creek near their eastern Iowa home when they  found a mastodon tooth.

The children were building a dam when they found the huge mastodon tooth. It may be up to 20,000 years old.

Mastodons are an ancient species of mammal related to the elephant.

12-year-olds Michael Koch and Brylie Volker, 11-year-old Chase Redfern,  and10-year-old Brynlee Volker were gathering twigs to build the dam when they found the mastodon tooth.

"We were going to build a dam to hold back all the water and we wanted to clear out the rocks," they said.

"I saw something flip over so I picked it up and realized it probably wasn't a rock," said Redfern.

The children ran to get an adult when they found the tooth, which they thought was  dinosaur tooth. And, of course, the grown-ups didn't believe them-but the kids were right.

"We ran up by the barn where all the adults were sitting, and we said we found a tooth," said Volker. "They thought it was just like a little mini rock like it wasn't going to be anything, and we came back with this enormous thing. It was pretty cool."

The mastodon tooth might be part of the finding of much larger remains, a scientist said, in part because it was in very good condition.

Katherine McCarville, an associate professor of geosciences at Upper Iowa University thinks the tooth the children found may have belonged to a mastodon 20,000 years ago. She says that most mastodon teeth are found in Siberia.

"It's cool that we found it just like here where we live around here, and it's cool because I got to find it with all my friends," Volker told press.