San Mateo Creek Yields 1 Rare Pacific Mastodon Molar, One of Bay Area's Best Preserved
Updated
Updated · The Mercury News · Sep 9
San Mateo Creek Yields 1 Rare Pacific Mastodon Molar, One of Bay Area's Best Preserved
3 articles · Updated · The Mercury News · Sep 9
Summary
Brigid Lynch spotted the toaster-sized tooth half-submerged in a San Mateo County creek in March while working on red-legged frog habitat restoration in a redwood preserve.
Stanford University experts and paleontologist Wayne Thompson confirmed it as a Pacific mastodon molar, calling it the most complete specimen from the area and among the Bay Area's best preserved.
The fossil now sits in a temperature-controlled room at Stanford's Doerr School of Sustainability, where researchers are drying it naturally and plan carbon dating and other tests on its age, diet and local climate.
Curators believe the tooth likely washed out recently from an upstream hillside rather than lying exposed in the creek for thousands of years, and the preserve's exact location is being withheld to deter digging.
Pacific mastodons stood about 9 feet tall and survived in California until roughly 11,000 years ago, offering a rare window into an Ice Age Bay Area once inhabited by mastodons, saber-toothed cats and humans.