Trent Satterthwaite and James Bristle were both working on Bristle's farm Monday, digging into the ground to drain some water, when they came across something strange.
Researchers at the University of Michigan (UM) arrived in Chelsea, Mich. a few days later and confirmed what the farmers found were the bones of a woolly mammoth, The Detroit Free Press reported.
"It's a pretty exciting day," a Chelsea resident and excavator named James Bollinger, who was on hand Thursday to aid in the dig, told the newspaper. "I've been digging for 45 years and I've never dug anything up like that."
Dan Fisher, a UM professor and the director of the Museum of Paleontology, said the find represents one of the most complete woolly mammoth skeletons ever unearthed in Michigan.
"We didn't stop to eat or drink," he told The Free Press. "It was a hard, hard day of work, but every bit worth it.
"You have a better chance of winning the lotto than doing what we just did."
Satterthwaite said he jokingly told Bristle when they came across a bone they "just found a dinosaur or something." They may not have known what it was, but they knew it could be significant, so they reached out to UM and were eventually forwarded to Fisher.
"We knew it was something that was out of the norm," Bristle told Ann Arbor News. "My grandson came over to look at it, he's 5-years-old, he was speechless."
