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 Ice Age.
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 specimens 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 paleontologist 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.