BARODA, Mich. — It was a mammoth discovery in Baroda. Three boys looking for bottles along an old railroad line found a vertebrae from a Jefferson Mammoth.

The 40-acre family farm in Baroda is a place of discovery, and Ethan Hoge, Evan Hoge and Sebastian O'Connell were digging in.

"Looking for old bottles," said Ethan.

"I told my uncle that we found a poison bottle that my cousin found," said Evan. "We went to look for it but couldn't find it."

What Ethan, Sebastian, Evan and their uncles did find was nothing short of mammoth.

"Instead of having an old Coca Cola bottle we got a big mammoth bone," said Sebastian.

"I thought that was crazy," added Ethan.

The township started construction on a drainage ditch last fall. The overturned earth is the same place where the kids normally play.

It's also the same place where the mammoth bone was spotted.

"I thought it was just a piece of wood," said Evan.

The lumbar vertebrae unearthed is believed to be a Jefferson Mammoth and more than 12,000 years old.

"It's kind of cool finding out how old it was and a making a cool discovery," said Sebastian.

"I never even thought that it would be one out here," said Evan.

Andrews University has a full skeleton, unearthed in the 60s. Professors say there are more mammoth bones beneath Southwest Michigan.

"It's not as uncommon as you might think," said Tom Goodwin, Professor of Paleobiology at Andrews University. "Here in Michigan, there have been many dozens of finds, usually mastodons."

Goodwin said mastodons are usually found at a ratio of 4 to 1 compared to mammoths.

Since the boys found a mammoth locally, they aren't wasting any time to find more bones.

"It's just really cool to find stuff like that," said Evan.