Mastodon Tooth: See Mysterious 10,000-Year-Old Fossil Found In Michigan Charity Box [VIDEO]

A Michigan Christian charity group called In The Image, that typically receives donated clothing items, household appliances and furniture, recently received something they weren’t expecting. John Timmer, a staff member, was going through the day’s donations when he picked up an interesting object. "I picked it up and it looked strangely like a giant molar of an animal and you could see enamel on it, so it looked like a tooth to me," Timmer said. “It definitely looked like some sort of tooth. But I didn't really know what to do with it."

The tooth, which was "quite heavy," according to Timmer, is roughly 10 inches long and about the size of a loaf of bread. "And there was a sharper piece that looked like a tusk, possibly, and that one was probably a little bigger, about a foot long and maybe five inches wide," he said.

Timmer kept the items on a shelf for about a week. Then, he called the Grand Rapids Public Museum to see if they could tell what the findings were exactly and upon examination, the pieces were found to be part of the tooth of a mastodon and what looks like the tip of a mastodon tusk probably 10,000 to 12,000 years old.

It's still a mystery who owned the pieces and how they ended up into a truckload of donations. Timmer says the driver made several pickups that day and didn't remember where he got it. “It’s pretty amazing the things we get,” Jay Starkey, the charity’s executive director, said. “I just looked at it and said, ‘This is something different.’” The charity could have sold the discovery to a private buyer and “made some money,” Starkey added, but the new additions were instead donated to the museum’s educational program.

"My first inclination was to donate it to the museum because it was kind of a cool piece of history, kind of a neat artifact," Timmer also agreed. If anyone knew where the items came from, they would be more valuable and they'd have to care for them differently. But since they don’t, even children are allowed to handle them. "For a child to be able to handle a 10,000-year-old mastodon tooth or tusk is just unbelievable," Katie Moore, of the Public Museum, said.