Man discovers mastodon tusk while fossil hunting underwater off Florida coast 2024-USA

 A Florida man discovered a 4-foot mastodon tusk at the bottom of the ocean while searching for fossils near the coast of Venice.

Alex Lundberg, 29, works in research at a cancer hospital in Tampa on weekdays, but come the weekend, he is a scuba diver and amateur fossil hunter who drives an hour south to Venice Beach to stay at his parents' house and search for prehistoric objects in the waters nearby.

"I'm kind of a weekend warrior," Lundberg told  A Florida man discovered a 4-foot mastodon tusk .

He discovered the tusk in April when he went diving with his friend, and only recently unveiled his find to the world.

"I look over, and I see what looks like a 6-inch piece of wood uncovered in the sand, and I swim over to it, and I started fanning it, trying to get the sand off of it," said Lundberg. "It just kept getting bigger and bigger."

He uncovered the cross-section and realized it was a tusk that was a foot wide, four feet long and weighed about 60 pounds.

"It was absolutely crazy," said Lundberg.

A rare discovery

According to Lundberg, it isn't uncommon to find broken pieces or small sections of mammoth tusks (slightly different from mastodons) off of Venice.

"We call it mammoth bark because it just looks like a piece of tree bark," said the fossil hunter.

But to find a whole tusk is "super rare."

"Only a handful of ever come out of Venice," said Lundberg.

The fossil hunter added that his friend found an eight-foot tusk in the same area three years ago.