A man in Mississippi recently discovered an ancient Columbian mammoth tusk dating back to the Ice Age. While exploring in Madison County, fossil and artifact enthusiast Eddie Templeton discovered part of the tusk protruding from a steep embankment. Upon finding the tusk, he alerted the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ).
According to a statement from the MDEQ, “Earlier this week our MDEQ’s Mississippi State Geological Survey scientists received a message about a major fossil discovery made by Eddie Templeton, an avid artifact and fossil collector and friend of the Survey. He was exploring in rural Madison County looking for fossils when he stumbled upon what appeared to be a portion of an ice-age elephant tusk exposed in a steep embankment.”
The fossil collector knew he needed to act quickly to preserve the piece of ancient history. “Eddie knew that acting quickly on the significant find was important. From both his and our Survey Geologist’s experience that just the heat of afternoon summer sun alone could dry a specimen like this out, destroying it, and it could quickly be lost forever. The Mississippi Museum of Natural Science was also ready to respond to help by providing the material resources to our team to properly excavate and stabilize the find for removal of the important fossil,” the MDEQ added.
The features of the tusk led experts to conclude that it belonged to the Columbian mammoth. “It was suspected based on the strong curvature of the massive tusk that Eddie and the team were dealing with a Columbian mammoth and not that of the more common mastodon. This would be the first of its kind for the area,” the press release from the environmental authority said.
The statement further described the historical context of the artifact. “Mississippi was home to three Proboscideans during the last ice age: Mastodon, Gomphothere and the Columbian mammoth. All three possessed ivory tusks. Mastodons are by far the most common Proboscidean finds in Mississippi as they were browsers, like modern deer and inhabited a variety of different environments,” the press release specified.
Reportedly, this part of Mississippi was home to a wide variety of Ice Age-era animals that are now extinct. “These colossal mammals played an important role in maintaining the rich fertile prairie ecosystem, much as their modern elephant relatives do in other parts of the world today. This ice-age prairie ecosystem of what is now Madison County was also home to herds of now extinct horses and giant bison along with giant ground sloths, giant tortoises and tapirs,” the statement continued..
“Our field scientists interpreted the mammoth tusk specimen to be leaning up against the edge of an ancient sandbar of a stream while a portion of it rest on the floor of stream channel,” the press release added. “Eddie’s discovery offers a rare window into the Columbian mammoths that once roamed Madison County along the Jackson Prairie of central Mississippi.”
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Featured image credit: Geoff Peters from Vancouver, BC, Canada, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mammoth_(3250238096).jpg