SCOTCHTOWN, Orange County (WABC) — A prehistoric pine tree was found in the soil of a New York backyard.

The mastodon jaw was found along with other bone fragments in a backyard in Scotchtown, Orange County.

A homeowner in Orange County was working in his own backyard when he made a discovery.

The homeowner found two teeth in front of his property. Two more teeth were later unearthed just a few centimeters underground, along with a piece of a toe bone and a rib fragment.

Researchers say the findings will help improve understanding of Ice Age inhabitants in the region.

The New York State Museum reports that over 150 mastodon fossils have been found across the country so far – about a third of them in Orange County.

“This is one of the first teeth, yes. “So he realized it was just sticking out of the ground,” Dr. Robert Feranec of the New York State Museum.

The Ice Age fossil was discovered in topsoil, just 12 to 18 inches deep in the ground.

“At first I just thought we would poke around, grab the other tooth and pull it out of the ground and that would be it. But when we poked around the other tooth, it wasn’t moving and we were kind of poking around.” “I walked around a little bit more and realized it was stuck somewhere,” Feranec said.

The bone fragments are located in the jawbone of an estimated 13,000-year-old mastadon and are currently being researched and preserved in Albany at the New York State Museum.

“This is a piece of the toe that we found and it was next to the jaw.”

The toe, jaw and a piece of rib bone were unearthed in September near the small hamlet of Scotchtown as the homeowner mowed the backyard of his 20-year-old home.

“The property opens onto a wetland. And they told me they were joking that there was a mastodon back there. There’s something there, there’s fossils back there. Yes. And they joked back and forth like, oh, “I’ll find that one day,” Feranec said.

The bones found correspond to a mastodon of this size – about 8 to 9 feet tall and weighing three tons. One of these was found in 1972 at SUNY Orange in Middletown.

“We found these molars and then most of the jaw here, a lot of the part up here was crumbled and in fragments. But most of that lower part up to the chin was still intact,” said Dr. Cory Harris of SUNY Orange.

Sixty mastadons have been discovered in Orange County, more than any other place in the country.

“It was a Friday morning and a couple of property owners came to the college because they had found something unusual on their property and first went to another faculty member who brought them to me because I have experience with archaeological excavations. But that was it.” “It was pretty clear right away that they had mastodont teeth,” Harris said.

The priority was to get the teeth out before winter, but next spring researchers hope to see what else there might be.

“Oh, it’s exciting. In any case. I mean, Orange County has a lot of mastodons compared to the rest of the state and really the rest of the country. But that still doesn’t mean you find them every day,” Harris said.