A southern Kansas construction project has uncovered a tusk believed to have belonged to a mammoth.

The discovery was made last week while the Kingman County city of Cunningham was running a sewer line across a grain elevator’s property.

Skyland Grain CEO David Cron says a Wichita State University associate professor would examine the seven- to eight-foot-long curved tusk Friday. Mammoths are the extinct, prehistoric cousin to the elephant and once roamed the region. Their bones also were discovered on a Scott County farm in recent years.

Cron is hoping to get advice on how to extract the tusk without damaging it. Eventually, he would like to see it displayed for the public, although curiosity-seekers are being shooed away from the business for now.