“I didn’t want to let pollution in the river,” he told L.A Washington Post The child who tried to remove the object from the stream with the help of a stick found it there. Then he picked up the dark object and realized that it was not plastic, but something like a “rock”.

Excited by the find, he runs to show it to his grandmother and mother, who at first think the object could be a piece of petrified wood. The mother, Megan Johnson, was curious as to what that thing was. He photographed it and posted the photos on Facebook, hoping someone would be able to identify it. Some friends have commented that it looks kind of like a tooth. After several phone calls and emails, the family had an answer: What Jeremiah had found was part of a mammoth tooth, an animal that went extinct thousands of years ago.

Confirmation came from archaeologist Patrick O’Grady of the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History. The expert immediately realized what the object was when he saw the image, noting that the mammoth’s teeth are quite recognizable to those familiar with the animal. “Finding something like this one over 10,000 years old is very unusual, especially in Oregon, where the landscape is covered in many layers of soil and vegetation,” he explained to the American newspaper.

According to the specialist, this is a situation where the right person is in the right place at the right time. If Jeremiah hadn’t been so curious about this thing, the water could have washed away the tooth, cracking it further when it hit the rocks.

Mammoths roamed the Earth until 10,000 years ago, when they became extinct, most likely due to the sudden climatic changes felt during that era. They were animals that could reach three meters in height and weigh five thousand kilograms.