"It is really exciting to find something. Anything pre-historic that old right here in
Blake Bufford, a paleontologist who works at the fossil discovery center of
And it was out here along Highway 99 during a multi-million dollar construction project that crews with Cal-Trans found the bones.
A paleontologist was on site when the bones were found.
"We essentially knew that they were going to be digging more than five feet and knowing so we wanted to make sure that we had a paleontologist on site monitoring the construction just in case we did stumble across any ancient artifacts or historical artifacts that we can preserve later on," Angela Daprato of Cal-Trans said.
It's determined the bones are a mammoth, bison, horses, dog and a camel.
Paleontologists believe these bones found date back between ten to 50-thousand years ago during the last period of the ice age.
"It all adds more to the knowledge of the place where we live in the San Joaquin Valley and what it was like in the past, so by studying the bones they can learn something not just from the animals but the environment, the climate things like this," Bufford said.