A fossil hunter made the spectacular discovery while diving as part of the Fossil Addicts Dig and Dive Charters project designed to search for such fossil objects. The project also organizes trips for customers who want to have a similar experience.

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Creatsulas doesn’t know exactly how old the specimen is, but believes it could be at least 10,000 years old.

I grabbed it for a second and realized it wasn’t a tree, it was the jaws of a mammoth.
– he said in an interview with NBC2, a local television channel in the state of Florida.

The researcher plans to retrieve the jawbone to be cleaned and analyzed by experts who can determine the age of the fossil using radiocarbon analysis. It determines the levels of certain radioactive elements (usually radiocarbon) in fossils to determine when the animal died.

Mammoth jaws are at least 10,000 years old / Photo: John Kreatsoulas

According to DNA research, the Columbian mammoth was likely a hybrid of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and an unknown lineage of mammoths that came to North America from Siberia about 1.5 million years ago. Columbian mammoths became extinct between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago, at the end of the last ice age. Global warming has caused habitat loss for this megafauna, and this, combined with human hunting, has resulted in massive population declines.

This isn’t the first mammoth fossil found in Florida’s Peace River. In 2021, divers discovered the leg bone of a 1.2 meter tall mammoth in the water.