A California man picked up something a little more exciting than a seashell while running on the beach.
Jim Smith, a frequent runner in Santa Cruz’s Aptos neighborhood, didn’t realize he had just discovered a rare and ancient artifact, a mastodon tooth, and took the find home. He came to his senses after an image of what he had brought from the beach appeared on his television screen. while he is watching the news.
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according to McClatchy newsPaleontologist Wayne Thompson of the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History was desperate to find ancient fossils. The scientist first noticed its potential location when someone tagged him in a Facebook post by the woman who posted the photo on the beach, but it disappeared when he went looking for it with her. was So Thompson asked the person who found the artifact on social media to come forward.
“We are currently searching the ISO for anyone who may have recovered this tooth on the shores of Rio del Mar’s Aptos Creek estuary,” Thompson wrote in an Instagram post. “This is a very important specimen. A worn molar of an extinct adult Pacific mastodon, Mammut pacificus.”
Thompson added that it was the only thing. Other Documented Mastodon Specimens A juvenile two-toothed mastodon skull found in Santa Cruz County was “discovered in the exact same area” in the 1980s.
“Fossils in Santa Cruz County are pretty rare,” says Liz Broughton, visit experience manager at the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum. “That makes this discovery invaluable for science.”
Smith eventually turned up at the museum and decided to donate the fossil, estimated to be about 10 inches long.
“I was really surprised when it was handed over,” Thompson said, adding that the museum will conduct tests to determine the age of the tooth before displaying it. He believes it to be about 5,000 years old.
“It’s a miracle I’m back,” he said.
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