Prehistoric bones found during pool construction in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- Construction workers unearthed a set of rare bones while digging a backyard pool in Las Vegas.

KTNV reports the bones are believed to be up to 14,000 years old and date back to Earth's most recent ice age.

During the excavation process, the pool builders dug up a set of bones that were approximately four to five feet below ground level.

Concerned they had uncovered some type of criminal activity, the pool builders contacted the police, who quickly realized they were prehistoric bones.

"We had joked on Friday that while they started digging, 'Oh great maybe they will find a dinosaur for us and it will pay for our pool," resident Matt Perkins quipped. "Obviously, when they told us they found some fossils, that was more of a shock to us than we were expecting."

Joshua Bonde, the director of research of the Nevada Science Center, visited the backyard on Tuesday to inspect the discovery.

"It's somewhere between 6,000 and 14,000 years old," explained Bonde.

"What we found was when they were excavating the backyard pool, they were cutting through ice age layers of sediment and sure enough they had a skeleton of an animal," explained Perkins.

Bonde says the large bones may belong to a horse or similar large mammal.

The backyard bone discovery is not far from Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, which has seen rare fossils, such as mammoths, unearthed before.