Well-preserved tooth from Pacific mastodon found in a creek in San Francisco Bay Area
Researchers will carbon-date the exceptionally preserved molar and create a 3D copy for public outreach, officials said.
- On Wednesday, the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District announced that geomorphologist Brigid Lynch discovered a fossilized Pacific mastodon tooth estimated at 10,000 years old in a San Mateo County creek bed.
- Pacific mastodons were massive herbivores that roamed California and Western states during the Pleistocene epoch, thriving from roughly 2.5 million years ago until their extinction about 11,700 years ago.
- Lynch discovered the molar in "immaculate condition" while surveying a creek for a habitat enhancement project supporting the threatened California red-legged frog.
- The fossil was donated to Stanford University's Doerr School of Sustainability, where researchers plan to use carbon dating to determine its exact age and create a 3D scan.
- This discovery helps researchers study Earth's past biodiversity, while Midpen officials noted the find illustrates the importance of protecting open spaces for endangered species.
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Well-preserved tooth from Pacific mastodon found in a creek in San Francisco Bay Area – WTOP News
Brigid Lynch was working along a wooded creek in a mountainous part of the San Francisco Bay Area when something that didn’t look like the rocks she’d been studying caught her eye. It turned out to be the fossilized tooth of a Pacific mastodon. “I keep joking it wasn’t hard to find,” Lynch, a geomorphologist...
Well-preserved tooth from Pacific mastodon found in a creek in San Fra
Brigid Lynch was working along a wooded creek in a mountainous part of the San Francisco Bay Area when something that didn’t look like the rocks she’d been studying caught her eye. It turned out to be
Associated Press News
Well-preserved tooth from Pacific mastodon found in a creek in San Francisco Bay Area
Brigid Lynch was working along a wooded creek in a mountainous part of the San Francisco Bay Area on a habitat restoration project when something that didn’t look like the rocks she’d been studying caught her eye.
'Oddly shaped rock' unearthed in California turns out to be 'immaculate' mastodon molar
A field survey in San Mateo County, California, has revealed the fossilized tooth of an adult Pacific mastodon, an ice-age giant that was probably native to the West Coast.
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