VENICE, Fla. — A Tampa man made an incredible discovery while diving off the coast of Venice last month. While sifting through the sand, Alex Lundberg found a 4-foot mastodon tusk.
"This is once in a lifetime, is what I've been told it," said Lundberg with a laugh.
Right now, the 29-year-old amateur fossil hunter has the prehistoric relic decorating his Tampa apartment.
"It's in a box for Christmas lights, and it was next to my bed," he said in disbelief. "Finding a big enough cabinet to display it in is going to be the first challenge."
Lundberg explained that the discovery was made last month off Manasota Beach near Venice, a place he has explored many other times.
"I go in and I just see this piece right here sticking out, just a small strip of it. And, I was like, okay, like, that might be a tusk. We find lots of pieces out there, just broken stuff, all the time," he said
But this was no fragment. Rather, it was a lengthy 4-foot remnant.
He said he and his friend sawm with it to the boat and hoisted it over the side using a sling made out of a beach towel.
"It was absolutely surreal just getting it up because I was, you know, expecting it to crumble or fall apart because it's just, you don't find tusks like this in big sections," he said.
Hunter Windham, an education specialist with Bradenton's Bishop Museum of Science and Nature said, "All paleontologists are looking for that kind of diamond in the rough, right?"
Windham said the tusk could be anywhere from 10,000 to millions of years old.
"The great thing about Florida, especially if you're looking for animals that were around during the last ice age, is that the coastline extended way further out than today. So these animals were walking on dry land up to 50 or 60 miles out to the Gulf of Mexico relative to us today," said Windham.
While very few mastodon tusks can be found for sale, available ones are going for thousands.
However, for Lundberg, such a treasure is priceless.
"I told my girlfriend, this tusk is going to go to our kids and our grandkids, like, this is a family tusk now. It's part of the family," he said.
Before he can pass it down for generations, Lundberg said he will report his find to the Florida Museum of Natural History, in line with his fossil permit. Then, fingers crossed, they will let him keep it.