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A family outing turned into a major archaeological discovery by one New Mexico 10-year-old who literally stumbled on a million-year-old dinosaur fossil.

Jude Sparks was hiking the rugged New Mexico desert some five miles east of Las Cruces by the majestic Organ Mountains in November with his parents Kyle and Michelle and brothers, Hunter,8 and Rhett, 5.

Jude said he and his brothers were checking their hand-held radios when he tripped on something.

“I tripped on the bottom of the tusk and fell flat on my face,” Jude told Fox News.When he turned his head he was looking directly at part of what looked like a jaw bone. “It looked like large chunks of bone.”

Dusting himself off Jude quickly called Hunter who was nearer to the parents to come over to check out what he found.

The boys originally thought it looked like a large dark cow skull but when Kyle and Michelle arrived they knew it was something much more relevant than what is typically found in the desert.

Kyle said when he returned home he called Peter Houde, professor of Biology at nearby New Mexico State University.When Houde arrived at the site he was amazed at what young Jude tripped on.

“I think this is only the second full Stegomastodon skull found in the state of New Mexico,” Houde said.

There was another found at Elephant Butte State Park just north of Las Cruces about two years ago.

“That one lacks the jaw and it appears the ends of both tusks were broken off,” Houde told Fox News. “Ours includes the jaw but is missing one tusk so far - we may find it yet.”According to Houde, there are only three nearly full Cuvieronius skulls, all of which were found in Bolivia in the early 1900's. He says this recent discovery is the most complete.

“Intact skulls of both of these are extremely rare and we've had unprecedented luck in obtaining the two,” Houde said of New Mexico’s unearthed prehistoric past.

He surmises the fossil Jude tripped over was unearthed by recent rains in the region but never the less, the irony of a youngster tripping over such a historic find while playing with his brothers is inescapable.

Houde said these mammoth animals are a primitive group of proboscideans ('elephantoids') from which modern elephants evolved. The recent discoveries are late-comers that were not ancestral to anything.