SHELDON, Iowa (KCAU) — A woolly mammoth tooth found in Sheldon, Iowa recently is said to be as old as the last time Earth was in a glacial maximum which scientists say was more than 20,000 years ago.

Work continues today at a lift station construction site on the campus of Northwest Iowa Community College, but two weeks ago, a wastewater technician from DGR Engineering — Justin Blauwet — was checking on the station’s progress when he noticed something extraordinary.

“I had just gone back to that location just to check if anything else had been done or anything like that and I pulled up and started looking around and then it was just laying right there on top,” said Blauwet.

Blauwet said he believes the woolly mammoth tooth had been sitting on top of an excavated pile of dirt there for about a month and explained how he knew it was more than just a regular old rock.

“My six-year-old is like really into dinosaurs and so we watch the Discovery Channel and all the dinosaur shows and stuff with woolly mammoths and so that’s kind of where I recognized it from, ” said Blauwet.

The tooth is believed to be a molar and weighs around 11 pounds, and since it was found on NCC’s campus, they’ve displayed it over the last couple of days along with a mammoth rib and vertebrae that were donated to the school decades ago. NCC president John Hartog said the new artifact has the campus buzzing with excitement.

“It just reminds us again of our past, connects us to what has come before, and it’s great, it’s exciting, it’s interesting and it’s brought lots of people together and we’re talking about it,” said Hartog.

Hartog said the tooth will be displayed at the Sheldon Prairie Museum for the foreseeable future but would love to one day show off all three of NCC’s mammoth fossils.