Seattle Construction Workers Find Mammoth Tusk

Construction workers at Seattle's South Lake Union area found a mammoth tusk Tuesday, according to several media reports. Experts have confirmed that the tusk belonged to a mammoth that lived during the last Ice Age.

Workers found the tusks some 1.5 stories down. Paleontologists at the Burke Museum of Natural History have confirmed that the tusk belonged to a mammoth that lived during the last ice age. Q13 fox.com reported. The tusk was found in a private property.

"Burke Museum paleontologists have examined the fossil and we are confident that it represents a tusk from an ice age mammoth," said Christian Sidor, the museum's curator of vertebrate paleontology, according to KIRO TV.com. "Because the fossil is on private property and does not seem to be associated with an archaeological site, it is up to the landowner to decide what they would like to do with the tusk."

Sidor added that the museum is "happy to excavate the tusk," if the landowner would permit it.

 "The discovery of a mammoth tusk in South Lake Union is a rare opportunity to directly study Seattle's ancient natural history.  As a public repository, the Burke Museum would be pleased to curate the tusk and provide access to scientists and others wishing to study it," he told, reported Q13 fox.com.

Last year, workers installing a gas line near Enid, Oklahoma, found remains of a woolly mammoth, IB Times reported earlier.

See a video and pictures of the latest find, here. 

Mammoths

The giant elephant relatives belong to M. Africanavus or the African mammoth. Their descendants moved into Eurasia and are called M. meridionalis, the "southern mammoths," according to UCMP Berkeley. From Europe, these woolly giants traveled to North America via the Bering Strait and then spread throughout the New World.

Research has shown that the last of woolly mammoths that lived between 40,000 and 4,000 years ago, had North American roots.