ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — At first, fossil-hunting diver Alex Lundberg thought the long object on the seafloor off Florida’s Gulf Coast was a piece of wood. It turned out to be something much rarer, Lundberg said: a large piece of a tusk long extinct mastodon.
Lundberg and his diving partner had previously found fossils at the same site, including mammoth teeth, bones of an ancient jaguar and parts of a dire wolf. They also found small pieces of mastodon tusk, but nothing this large and intact.
“We knew there might be one nearby,” Lundberg said in an interview, noting that as he continued to blow sand away from the tusk he found in April, “it just kept getting bigger and bigger.” I’m like, this is a big tusk.”
The tusk measures about 4 feet (1.2 meters) and weighs 75 pounds (31 kilograms), Lundberg said, and was found at a depth of about 25 feet (7.6 meters) near Venice, Florida. It currently sits in a display case in his living room, but the story may not end there.
Mastodons are related to mammoths and modern-day elephants. Scientists say they lived mainly in what is now North America, and originated as early as 23 million years ago. They went extinct about 10,000 years ago, along with dozens of other large mammals that disappeared as Earth’s climate rapidly changed – and Stone Age humans were on the hunt.
Remains of mastodons are commonly found across the continent Indiana lawmakers vote a few years ago to designate the mastodon as an official state fossil. Mastodons can be seen in the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, one of the most important locations in the world for fossils from ancient times.
The age of the tusk Lundberg found has not yet been determined.
Under Florida law, vertebrate fossils found on state lands, including coastal waters, belong to the state under its jurisdiction. Florida Museum of Natural History. Lundberg has a permit to collect such fossils and must report the tusk discovery to the museum when his permit is renewed in December. According to the museum, he has had that permit since 2019.
“The museum will review the discoveries and sites to determine their significance and the permit holder may keep the fossils if the museum does not request them within 60 days of reporting,” said Rachel Narducci, collections manager in the museum’s Vertebrate Paleontology department. “This could be an important find, depending on where exactly the find was made.”
Lundberg, who earned a degree in marine biology from the University of South Florida and now works at a leading cancer center in Tampa, is optimistic he will be able to save the tusk.
“You don’t know where it comes from. It has been rolling around in the ocean for millions of years. It’s more of a cool piece,” he said.