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Common Core: RH.6-8.1, RH.6-8.2, RH.6-8.4, RH.6-8.7, WHST.6-8.4, RI.6-8.1, RI.6-8.2, RI.6-8.4, RI.6-8.7, W.6-8.4

NCSS: Culture • Time, Continuity, and Change • People, Places, and Environments • Science, Technology, and Society • Civic Ideals and Practices

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Archaeology

Jennifer Schuh

This is about the size of a sheet of notebook paper.

Can You Guess What This Is?

Hint: It belonged to a 10-foot-tall, 6-ton prehistoric mammal!

North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy Stock Photo

 Mastodons ate mostly twigs and leaves.

When a jogger spotted a strange brown object on a California beach last May, he almost passed it by. Good thing he circled back to pick it up, because it turned out to be a priceless treasure: the tooth of a mastodon.

Mastodons were elephant-like mammals that roamed North America for millions of years. They went extinct at the end of the last . 

Most mastodon fossils in the United States have been found in the eastern part of the country. It wasn’t until 2019 that researchers confirmed that found along the West Coast belonged to a previously unknown mastodon species, Mammut pacificus. (The other North American species was Mammut americanum. It had a much wider range, and its fossils are more common.) 

The newfound tooth is about 10 inches long and 8 inches wide. Wayne Thompson, a at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History (SCMNH) in California, was the first expert to get a close look at the fossil. He says it has many stories to tell. 

For one thing, Thompson says, there is a good chance the tooth may have belonged to a Mammut pacificus that lived 12,000 to 40,000 years ago. If testing confirms that, he says, it would support growing evidence that the last Ice Age may have continued in what now is central California until as recently as 12,000 years ago. Mastodons “preferred cold environments,” Thompson explains. 

Researchers hope that the tooth will reveal even more about the past. As Liz Broughton of the SCMNH says, finds like this “can provide a lot of information about the environment [prehistoric animals] were existing in. Every piece paints a picture.”

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