California resident Jennifer Schuh was enjoying a stroll on the beach on Memorial weekend when she spotted a 30cm tooth sticking out of the ground.
Unsure of what she found, Schuh posted photos on Facebook asking a community group what it could have been. It was here that Wayne Thompson, a local paleontology collector from the Santa Cruz Museum contacted Schuh, informing her that she had discovered a worn molar from an adult Pacific mastodon.
A Pacific mastodon is an extinct relative of the elephant. They would have stood at a height of 2.1-3.1 meters, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum.
“This is an extremely important find,” Thompson wrote, and he urged Schuh to call him.
By the time Schuh returned to the beach, the mastodon tooth had been momentarily lost. Luckily, a local jogger rediscovered the tooth and returned it to her.
“I was on one side of the creek and this lady was talking to me on the other side and she said what’s that at your feet?” Schuh said to the press. “It looked kind of weird, like burnt almost.”
“I was so excited to get that call,” said Liz Broughton, the museum’s visitor experience manager said. “Jim told us that he had stumbled upon it during one of his regular jogs along the beach, but wasn’t sure of what he had found until he saw a picture of the tooth on the news.”
The tooth has now been donated to the museum.
Information about the mastodon tooth
The tooth’s age is unclear, although the museum blog says that mastodons lived in California from 5 million to 10,000 years ago. There is still debate on when this creature lived, as according to the San Diego Natural History Museum, the American mastodon became extinct 13,000 years ago.
“We can safely say this specimen would be less than 1m years old, which is relatively ‘new’ by fossil standards,” Broughton is cited as having said in an email.
“We are thrilled about this exciting discovery and the implications it holds for our understanding of ancient life in our region,” the museum’s executive director, in a statement.
Having gotten a taste for archaeology, Schuh has ordered a replica of the tooth to be made into a necklace. “You don’t often get to touch something from history,” she said.