A set of bones that was found during the hunt for a meteorite could turn out to be the remains of a 120,000 year old Ice Age bobcat.
The remarkable find was made by a man searching in his son’s back garden in Riverside, California, using a pair of home-made dousing rods – assembled out of coat hangers.
A palaeontologist from the University of California, Riverside is now planning to excavate the remains to see exactly what the fossil is.
A pile of bones that was found during the hunt for a meteroite could turn out to be an Ice Age bobcat. The remarkable find was discovered by a man searching in his son’s back garden, in Riverside, California
HOW THE DISCOVERY WAS MADE
Mr Braithwaite had been showing his son how to locate his sprinklers using a dousing rod – which he constructed from two wire hangers.
What they uncovered were the bones of a creature, that archaeologists have said could possibly be a bobcat from the Ice Age.
A museum scientist at UC Riverside who specializes in vertebrate palaeontology, first thought it might be a bobcat.
After checking with a colleague, she said it was more likely that the animal is a dog or a coyote.
Because of the soil conditions, it could be from the Pleistocene epoch, which ended with the most recent Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago.
Gary Braithwaite, 65, said his son was digging in hope of finding a meteorite, thinking a piece of metal was buried in his back garden.
Mr Braithwaite had been showing his son how to locate his sprinklers using a dousing rod – which he constructed from two wire hangers.
They felt a twitch in the rod, known as an ‘anomaly’.
‘He was walking around and found an anomaly,’ Mr Braithwaite told Southern California News, ‘and then he found another.’
They decided to dig in search of metal, thinking it was some kind of meteroite.
About four feet (1.3 metres) down one hole, Mr Braithwaite found what looked like bones.
Archaeologists have said the bones could possibly be a bobcat from the Ice Age.
‘It was an absolute bizarre lucky find,’ he said.
Jess Miller-Camp, a museum scientist at UC Riverside who specializes in vertebrate palaeontology, first thought it might be a bobcat.
After checking with a colleague, she said it was more likely that the animal is a dog or a coyote.
Because of the soil conditions, it could be from the Pleistocene epoch, which ended with the most recent ice age, about 12,000 years ago.
Because of the soil conditions, the bones could be from the Pleistocene epoch, which ended with the most recent ice age about 12,000 years ago
The remarkable find was made by a man searching in his son’s back garden in Riverside, California, using a pair of home-made dousing rods – assembled out of coat hangers
Gary Braithwaite, left, discovered the bones in his son’s back garden. Jess Miller-Camp, right, a museum scientist at UC Riverside who specializes in vertebrate palaeontology, first thought it might be a bobcat
After checking with a colleague, she said it was more likely that the animal is a dog or a coyote