A Mammoth Discovery! Fossilised Tusk That May Be 60,000 Years Old found On US Building Site Before Being Raised 30ft To The Surface

A fossilised mammoth tusk found on a US building site has been retrieved from a 30ft pit and is on its way to a museum.

Cheers rang out as scientists and building crews used a crane to retrieve the tusk from the pit in Seattle, Washington state, to a waiting lorry. 

It measured 8ft 6in, had to be covered in 500lb of plaster for protection, and paleontologist Christian Sidor says it is between 22,000 and 60,000 years old.

The tusk is water-logged, and scientists say properly restoring and preserving it could take at least a year.

Construction workers found the tusk Tuesday, thinking at first that it might be a pipe or a root. 

The company building a 118-unit apartment complex at the site has nearly stopped construction to accommodate the scientists.

No more fossils were found during the overnight dig, the museum said Friday.

'Generally tusks like these are the last thing left' after animals and time remove the bones and the rest of the creature, Sidor said

The tusk was donated to the Burke Museum at the request of the landowner. The costs of the delay aren't known yet, said Scott Koppelman of AMLI Residential, which also owns apartment complexes to the south and west of the construction site.

The benefits to the community 'outweigh the costs,' he said Thursday.

Mammoths and mastodons were ancient elephant relatives that roamed North American lands that were not covered in ice. Both became extinct as glaciers retreated at the end of the Ice Age.

Columbian mammoths grew to 12 feet at the shoulder, or about the size of today's Asian elephants, the museum said.

Fossilized mammoth remains have been found numerous times in the Seattle area and across the state, so much so that the Columbian mammoth is the state's official fossil.

Still, most of the Burke Museum's collection is made of fragments. The tusk found this week would be one of the largest and most intact specimens found.

The museum's collection has 25 mammoth fossils from King County, including a tooth that was found a few blocks away from the tusk during a different project.