10 Unbelievable Details Surrounding The 12,000-Year-Old Mastodon Tooth A Six-Year-Old Boy Found

6 /10 Researchers’ Surprise

Researchers were shocked at the find, and they were able to confirm it was scarce.

It was found that the mastodon was young when it died, at approximately 20 years old.

Some of the researchers were even slightly jealous as they wished they could mine fossils every day. Most animals are scavenged after death; this is an exciting find as it is a well-preserved fossil.

5 /10 Finding Julian’s New Dream Career

After having the find of a lifetime and donating it to UMMP, Julian decided he wanted to become a paleontologist and felt it was a sign for him to become one over his previous dream career of becoming an archaeologist.

He was even given a behind-the-scenes tour of the University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor Research Museums center and met with paleontologists.

4 /10 Throwing Back The Find?

Julian’s father initially wanted to throw the tooth back, but Julian and the nature center thought a valuable lesson could be had from the discovery.

It was lucky they did not throw it back as it will be helpful to researchers. One of the great things about the find was that it was not an expert who found it but rather a child inspired by the discovery.

3 /10 Mastodon Fossil Discoveries

Many mastodon fossils have been found in the past few hundred years and have also been found in weird places. The first mastodon fossils were discovered in 1705 in the Hudson River Valley in New York.

Then in 1807, Thomas Jefferson funded an expedition led by William Clark to excavate mastodon and mammoth fossils from the Big Bone Lick site in Kentucky.

In 1963, Marshal Erb was excavating a pond when he discovered fossils known as Perry Mastodon. Later, in 2016 a sinkhole in Florida’s Aucilla River exposed old human tools and mastodon bones inside.

2 /10 Extinction Of Mastodons

The mastodon became extinct approximately 10,000 years ago. There are several theories as to why, but they mostly center around climate change coupled with human hunting.

As the Earth warmed up rapidly from the Ice Age, it may have occurred too quickly for the mastodon to adapt, or during this time, humans may have hunted them to extinction.

Another theory suggests the mastodon became extinct from a tuberculosis pandemic as 52% of 113 mastodons studied had signs of tuberculosis.

This may have also led to their extinction as the disease made them weak, and coupled with rising temperatures and fighting off humans, the species could not cut and go extinct.

1 /10 Difference between Mastodons And Mammoths

While mastodons and woolly mammoths both look like ancient elephants, they are two separate species.

However, the significant difference is when they appeared on Earth. Mammoths came into existence roughly 5.1 million years ago in Africa, while mastodons between 27 million and 30 million years ago in North and Central America.

Mastodons were also slightly smaller than mammoths. While they were both herbivores, how they ate was very different.

Mammoths used ridged molars to cut plants apart, similar to modern-day elephants, while mastodons had blunt, cone-shaped molars that crushed vegetation. Mastodons were named so because of their breast-like tooth shape by naturalist Georges Cuvier.