A foot-long mastodon tooth found on California beach is MISSING after discoverer thought it was wood
An Ice Age mastodon tooth has disappeared from a beach in Northern California after a woman took a photo of it and promptly left it in the sand, mistaking it for driftwood.
Jennifer Schuh posted photos of the foot-long tooth that washed up at Aptos Creek in Santa Cruz on Facebook, which caught the attention of local paleontologists.
βShe didn’t know what it was, how important it was. It looks like a piece of old firewood,” said Wayne Thompson, a consultant for the local history museum.
So she left it there. It’s understandable,” said the paleontology consultant crown.
Another prehistoric artifact was once found in the same creek in 1980 when a 16-year-old boy walking on the beach discovered a juvenile mastodon skull.
An Ice Age mastodon tooth was discovered and later retrieved from a beach in Northern California after the woman who found it left it thinking it was driftwood
Jennifer Schuh, the woman who discovered the mastodon’s tooth on the beach
Mastodons roamed Earth some 27 to 30 million years ago, paleontologists say
Schuh said she found the tooth on the beach at Rio Del Mar and, though she wasn’t sure what it was, felt the urge to take pictures.
“I saw my husband walking up to him and I was like, ‘You have to see this,'” Schuh said.
“He was like ‘huh, what am Iβ¦ what is it? Are you going to take it?’ and I’m like “well no, I’m just going to leave it because I don’t feel like it,” Schuh continued.
The photos show the 12-inch tooth lying in the sand with brown roots and a dark black nape and crown area at the top.
According to Live Science, the tusked animals ranged in size from seven feet for some females to three feet for males.
The prehistoric creatures were smaller than mammoths, which they are often compared to, yet could weigh an estimated four to six tons.
Schuh posted the photos of the find on Facebook in the hopes that some of her friends could identify the find.
The snaps eventually reached Thompson at the Santa Cruz Natural History Museum, where the search began.
“People said ‘woah that looks like a giant tooth.’ I practically hit the ground. It was a mastodon tooth, right in the same area where we know mastodons lived in Santa Cruz County,” Thompson said.
The photos show the 12-inch tooth lying in the sand with brown roots and a dark black nape and crown area at the top
βI almost hit the floor. It was a tooth from a mastodon right in the same area where we know mastodons lived in Santa Cruz County,β said paleontology consultant Wayne Thompson.
According to Thompson, the tooth belonged to a Pacific Mastodon.
By the time the paleontology consultant and Schuh made contact, the tooth was gone. ‘It wasn’t there. It’s MIA now,β he said.
The tide wasn’t high enough to wash the object away, so it’s believed another beachgoer who visited over the weekend grabbed it.
Searchers also searched through the sand but came up with nothing.
Thompson said the tooth was so high up on the beach in the dry sand that the only option is for someone to take it. Maybe they don’t know what it is and think it’s an old piece of petrified wood.’
The discovery comes more than 40 years after the first remains of a mastodon were found in Santa Cruz County on the exact same beach.
In 1980, Jim Stanton found a skull that is currently on display in the Natural History Museum of Santa Cruz.
“The skull found 40 years ago had sutures in the bones that hadn’t fully fused, meaning it was a juvenile,” Thompson said.
“The tooth found at the mouth of Aptos Creek was significantly worn and belonged to an older adult, probably in his 30s or 40s,” he continued.
The prehistoric creatures were smaller than mammoths they are often compared to, yet were estimated to weigh four to six tons
The tooth was found near Aptos Creek on Rio Del Mar Beach in Santa Cruz, California
According to Thompson, the latest tooth discovery serves as a sign that millions of years ago Santa Cruz County may have been home to a group of mastodons.
He also said they hope whoever took the tooth will return it soon.
“It’s super, super, super important to understand elephant life in Santa Cruz County during the last ice age,” Thompson told KRON.
‘There are only a few mammoths and mammoths are more common than mastodons. Aptos was a popular destination for Ice Age proboscis,” he said.
“It’s a piece of Santa Cruz history,” Thompson said.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History is asking the person who found the tooth to call 831-420-6115 or email them at collections@santacruzmuseum.org.