Coal miners in North Dakota unearth mammoth tusk buried for thousands of years

North Dakota: The first person to spot it was a shovel operator working the overnight shift, eyeing a glint of white as he scooped up a giant mound of dirt and dropped it into a dump truck.

Later, after the truck driver dumped the load, a dozer driver was ready to flatten the dirt but stopped for a closer look when he, too, spotted that bit of white.

Only then did the miners realise they had unearthed something special: a 7-foot-long mammoth tusk that had been buried for thousands of years.

The miners unearthed the tusk from an old streambed, about 40 feet (12.1 metres) deep, at the Freedom Mine near Beulah, North Dakota.

After spotting the tusk, the crews stopped digging in the area and called in experts, who estimated it to be 10,000 to 100,000 years old.

Jeff Person, a paleontologist with the North Dakota Geologic Survey, was among those to respond. He expressed surprise that the mammoth tusk hadn’t suffered more damage, considering the massive equipment used at the site.

Mammoths once roamed across parts of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Specimens have been found throughout the United States and Canada, said Paul Ullmann, a University of North Dakota vertebrate paleontologist.