Newsflash: Detroiters Kill Mastadon

And you thought Michigan only had cars and crime...

Luca and Daniel Haas got an opportunity to do something Monday that few kids their ages will ever get to do. They held the giant tooth of an extinct mammal in their hands.

They were standing at the site of the owner's final resting place. It was uncovered Friday, some 11,000 years after the mastodon died in a swampy area that borders what is now Rochester Hills and Auburn Hills....

Scientists from the Cranbrook Institute of Science sifted through the site Monday morning in search of more remains to add to the ones recovered by road construction crews on Friday....

By 2 p.m. Monday, the work was completed and the peat bog that had preserved the mastodon's remains had been replaced with sand that would serve as the foundation for the extension of Adams Road.

Stafford said that from the tooth recovered, they could discern the mastodon, which has been given the name Adams, was a mature adult.

That means it would have stood about 9 feet tall and weighed as much as 12,000 pounds.

But - we Detroiters may have caused the death of the Mastadon.

Mastodons were fairly common in Michigan in their day, inhabiting the spruce forests that covered the northern parts of the Lower Peninsula.

They roamed the earth for thousands of years before mysteriously dying out by the end of the second Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago.

Their sudden disappearance raised the question about the role man played in their demise, said Stafford, who was particularly interested in searching Adams' remains for signs of human violence, such as cuts to the bone.

I am glad men didn't have guns back then. Imagine how dangerous things would have been for 12,000 pound Mastadons, with Chuck Schumer not due on the scene for another 10,000 years.