Jennifer Shue photographed her teeth on May 26, 2023 at Rio del Mar beach. (Image credit: Jennifer Shu)

SANTA CRUS, Calif. (KRON) — Mastodon mystery solved in Santa Cruz County. A beach jogger turned in teeth of a giant mastodon dating back to the Ice Age on Tuesday, according to officials at the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum.

The one-foot-long tooth first emerged Friday from the sands of Rio Del Mar Beach near Aptos Creek. A curious beachgoer took a picture of the strange object, left it on the beach, asked what it was and uploaded the photo to her Facebook.

“It almost hit the floor. It was a mastodon tooth, located in the same area in Santa Cruz County where mastodons are known to have lived,” said Wayne Thompson, the museum’s paleontological collections adviser.

Paleontologists and volunteers spent a weekend digging in the sand to try to rediscover the tooth. But someone stranger had already taken it home.

Mr. Thompson contacted KRON4 to spread the word about the missing tooth.

“This is super, super, super important to understanding elephant life in Santa Cruz County during the last Ice Age,” Thompson said. There are only a few mammoth specimens, and mammoths are more common than mastodons. It’s part of Santa Cruz history. “

Sometime during Memorial Day weekend, beach jogger Jim Smith found the teeth while running along the beach in Rio del Mar, according to Liz Broughton, Visiting Experience Manager at the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum. Broughton said he brought the strange object home without knowing it belonged to an extinct Ice Age land animal.

The man who was jogging later contacted the museum after seeing a KRON4 news article.

“We got a call this afternoon from a longtime Aptos resident. He found it while driving along the coast. He saw your article.

A juvenile Pacific Mastodon skull was unearthed in 1980 at Aptos Creek. It took Thompson two years to carefully assemble the skull at the museum. The recently discovered adult mastodon tooth may be the first evidence that herds roamed Santa Cruz County during the last Ice Age, Thompson said.

Broughton said the tooth has scientific value in “picturing what life was like in our area.” “Especially the tooth provides a lot of information about the environment in which the tooth was located. Any part paints a picture.”

The tooth will now be studied and documented at the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum before being released to the public. The museum is located above Seabright Beach at 1305 East Cliff Drive in Santa Cruz.