Remarkable find: Mississippi man uncovers a rare mammoth tusk
Most fossil hunters can only dream of such a find, so Eddie Templeton can count himself very lucky. The man, while wading in a stream in Mississippi, stumbled upon a mammoth tusk over 2 metres long.
Eddie Templeton is an avid collector of artefacts and fossils. Exploring the rural areas of Madison County, he came across what appeared to be an exposed fragment of an Ice Age elephant tusk.
The man immediately contacted the palaeontological team at State Survey. The Mississippi Museum of Natural Science also provided the necessary materials to excavate and stabilise the find properly.
The discoverer and the palaeontological team worked all day manually removing the clayey sand from the find, allowing them to extract an intact tusk over 2 metres long from the mud.
According to George Phillips from the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science, it is a Columbian mammoth tusk related to the woolly mammoth. These animals lived in the late Pleistocene epoch, so their fossils can be between 11,700 and 75,000 years old.
Columbian mammoths were much larger than woolly mammoths, which roamed North America's cooler, more northern regions. These mammals played a crucial role in maintaining the rich, fertile prairie ecosystem, similar to their modern relatives, elephants, in other parts of the world.
Eddie Templeton's find is the first in the entire region. The Columbian mammoth probably weighed over 10 tonnes and could grow up to 4 metres tall. The exhibit has been sent to the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science.
