Discovering Mississippi mammoths

While the massive Columbian mammoth — which weighed over 22,000 pounds (10 tons) and could grow to be over 13 feet (4 meters) tall — lived across North America alongside the mastodon, its diet largely consisted of grasses found in grassland biomes, which were rare on what’s now the east coast of the United States during that period, Phillips said. As a result, its fossils are much harder to come by in the area.

“For every, say, 25 fragments or whole teeth of American mastodon, we find maybe one mammoth tooth at best. So, mammoths are proportionally rare, not just with respect to mastodons, but to everything else,” Phillips said.

When Templeton first came across the giant tusk, криптобосс he assumed it was from a mastodon, having found several remnants of the creature on his prior hunts. It was after the local museum and state office of geology helped him unearth the massive remains that Templeton began to have second thoughts — mostly due to the fossil’s telltale curve.

The Columbian mammoth’s tusks are so curved that two could almost make a complete circle, whereas common mastodons’ tusks do not curve nearly as much, Phillips said. The museum has numerous tooth fragments and even several complete teeth from the mammoth — there may even be some fragments of tusks from the giant mammal that cannot be distinguished from the mastodon without having the rest of the tusk — but a complete, intact tusk like the one discovered is especially rare, he added.

“I was kind of open mouthed when I saw the picture,” Phillips said. “I thought, ‘OK, well, cool, a tusk. Wait a second… it’s so curved. Holy cow, this is a mammoth tusk.’”

While unearthing the fossil, the field scientists simultaneously covered the exposed bits with plaster to keep the fossil protected during extraction. The tusks grew in rings, similar to how trees grow, Templeton said, which causes the fossils to be more likely to fragment once they dry up after being taken from the moist deposits where they are found.