LAFAYETTE TOWNSHIP, Ohio – Things started to look weird around 14 feet.

Compressed trees and tree stumps emerged under layers of peat and blue clay. Then scatters of shells.

“I knew something was funny then,” said trackhoe operator Tyler Underwood, who in August was digging at a Medina County horse farm. “I told my wife I was going to dig up a dinosaur.”

He didn’t find a dinosaur, though. Rather, he discovered an antler piece more than a foot long. Then part of a skull.

Together, he collected 34 bone fragments and bones belonging to an Ice Age stag-moose – a distant relative of a modern moose.

“Mastodons and mammoths, we’ve got dozens of them,” said Robert Glotzhober, the Ohio Historical Society curator who identified the bones. “This has pretty exciting potential … just finding out more about this animal that’s been extinct for 10,000-plus years.”

Stag-moose lived about 10,000 to 40,000 years ago, scientists say.

They were slightly larger than modern moose, had elklike heads, preferred wetlands and lived throughout the Midwest. And although there’s no evidence they interacted with humans, it’s possible, Glotzhober said, because humans appeared about 13,000 years ago.

The Medina moose is one of the most complete of eight Ohio stag-moose finds, Glotzhober said. It was also found at the greatest depth, suggesting it’s much older than others discovered.

But the historical society has not done a carbon-dating test to determine the bones’ age, mainly because it doesn’t own them; Ryan King, the owner of the horse farm, does. And though Glotzhober hopes he will donate them, King has yet to make up his mind.

“Obviously there’s a lot of scientific value to them,” said King, 25, who works for a family-owned flooring company. “I want (scientists) to get as much as they can from it.”

King was surprised by the find, made while Underwood dug out clay to build an outdoor riding arena. He had never heard of a stag-moose before.

Underwood, 25, of West Salem, thought he had discovered the remains of a regular moose, in part because of the flat antlers, he said.

“That’s cool, I guess,” he said, “but I was hoping for a dinosaur.”

DS END JOHNSTON

(Laura Johnston is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at ljohnsto(at)plaind.com.)

AP-NY-10-30-08 1223EDT