While paleontologists often dream of uncovering the remains of beings from millions of years ago, those discoveries do not come very easily.
Despite devoting so much time to studying physical history and fossils, some may go years without finding something from so long ago and search far and wide in attempts to do so.
That’s why when part-time fossil hunter Alex Lundberg went scuba diving with some friends off the coast of Florida and found a mastodon tusk, he felt as if he had struck gold.
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“I swim over to it and start fanning it and all of a sudden there's a huge section of it exposed and I'm just thinking to myself, oh my God, this is a tusk," Lundberg explained to WWSB-ABC7 News.
Lundberg and his friend Blair Morrow discovered the tusk 25 feet underwater, and despite it being four feet long and 60 lbs, the duo were able to bring it back up to the surface.
"I just show her this four-foot tusk and her eyes just light up," Lundberg recalled.
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"We made a sling out of a beach towel and kind of hoisted it over the side of the boat. It's absolutely surreal that it came up in one piece, and didn't break apart at all.”
The mastodon, a distant genetic relative of the wooly mammoth, went extinct 13,000 years ago but existed as a species for millions of years prior.
Lundberg, who reported his findings to the Florida Museum of Natural History, theorises that the tusk could be 10 million years old.
“It's just been kind of rolling around on the ocean floor for at least the last 10 million years," Lundberg told USAToday.
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Alex, a 29-year-old Tampa resident, first displayed an interest in fossil hunting as a young child.
As he grew into an adult, his passion never subsided, and he’s been going to Venice Beach, Florida, to search for fossils for five years now.
Lundberg is also optimistic that, while the tusk is historically interesting, it is not significant enough to warrant the Florida Museum of Natural History taking it out of his hands.
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"Its scientific value is limited, it's just more of a cool display piece at this point," he said.
While Lundberg is clearly incredibly proud of his discovery, it’s far from the endpoint for the amateur fossil hunter.
Instead, the Floridian’s dream is to find the skull of a saber-toothed tiger someday as he continues his journey.
"That's like the king of Florida fossil hunting," Alex explained.
Dylan Murray