A group of young men last week made an extraordinary discovery: the skull of an ancestor of modern elephants.

The men had gone hiking through Elephant Butte State Park near Albuquerque in New Mexico when a strange protruding object caught their eye. After digging up a little deeper, they unearthed an excellently preserved elephant skull.

One of the men, 31-year-old Antonio Gradillas told local news station KRQE: "As we are cruising by, we see a large tusk or what seems to be a large tusk coming out of the ground about a good three to four inches".

They thought they have discovered woolly mammoth bones but later it was found out that the bones were of something much older that lived during the Ice Age.

The group was responsible enough to contact Gary Morgan, chief palaeontologist at New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, to report what they had found. Mr. Morganand's team spent six hours to excavate the full fossil skull, which weighed 450 kilogram and measured approximately 5ft by 3ft.

They identified the skull to be of a stegomastodon, which is a prehistoric ancestor of our present elephant. They are believed to have inhabited North America around 15 million years ago and became extinct approximately 10,000 years ago. The creature was indeed a huge one as it must have weighed around 5,900 kilograms in total and measured approximately 5ft by 3ft.

The reasons for the skull fossil to be in such a good state with the tusks still intact is because of the fossil being under water for several centuries. It came up on the surface recently when the lake steadily dried up.

After studying the teeth of the fossil along with the location, the scientists concluded that the animal must have died around three million years ago, and was 50-year-old that time. Archeologists will put the skull on display once they finish studying it.