WAYNE COUNTY, Iowa – A team of University of Iowa archaeologists have made a discovery more than 10,000 years in the making. Researchers unearthed a mastodon skull in Wayne County, university officials announced. The team was tipped off to the site back in 2022 when a local resident found a strange, long bone on their property. That turned out to be a mastodon’s femur, and during an investigation the following fall, they found a broken tusk believed to be still attached to a skull.