A team of Pakistani paleontologists announced that a 1.1 million-year-old stegodon tusk has been unearthed in the Gujrat district of the Punjab province of Pakistan. The tusk, 8-feet long and 8-inches round, is the largest elephant family tusk ever discovered in the Asian country.

The paleontologist team from Punjab University claimed that the prehistoric tusk was of a mature elephant. The animal would have grown 13 feet tall whose weight was around 13 tons, the team explained in a statement.

Stegodon, a genus of the extinct subfamily Stegodontinae of the order Proboscidea, is considered as distant relatives of elephants that we see today. As per the fossil record, the animal roamed earth about 11 million years ago.

The paleontologists excavated the tusk in the Gujrat district near the city of Kharian. The age of the animal was estimated with uranium-lead radioactive dating technique, as per the paleontology team. “The research scholars of the zoology department have long been working at Pabbi of Rajo, Kharian and Sahawa and discovered a number of ancient fossils”, said Muhammad Akthar, a zoology professor at the Punjab University and the one who led the research trip.

This is not the first time when the excavation-site grabbed headlines for prehistoric fossils. Previously, researchers discovered ancient skulls and teeth of bovid from the Punjabi dig site. After analysis, it was found that the remains belong to subfamily Reduncinae.

The zoology department of the University of Punjab unearthed the stegodon tusk during an expedition in of Jhelum district’s Padri village, as per a spokesman for the university. Professor Akhtar said that the discovery may shed light on the animal and environment in which it lived.