The owner of a severed pinky finger has come forward to claim his mystery digit, prompting a public appeal for information.

A Melbourne ute owner found the detached fingertip just above the knuckle in the back of his ute on Monday.

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Andrew Mason, who initially mistook the fragment for rust, found it under a back panel of his car after it was parked in the suburb of Berwick.

“We went to the back of the ute to wash what we thought was rust or something, dirt … and we found a little bit of meat,” Mr Mason told the ABC.

“It had the whole nail on it. It was like someone had cut around it and ripped it off.

“It was more, ‘what the hell, where did it come from?’. A finger, you know? It was strange.”

A man in his 30s told police the finger was his, and blamed a “misadventure”.

The finger loss was not connected to any criminal offence, police said.