California Geologist Finds 10,000-Year-Old Mastodon Molar — SkimNews
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- Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist working at a Midpen preserve in San Mateo County, California, initially mistook the object for a rock before paleontologists identified it as a 10,000-year-old fossilized adult Pacific mastodon molar.
- Paleontologist Wayne Thompson called the molar "the most complete mastodon molar from our area" and "the most spectacular mastodon molar that I've ever seen," saying it adds another piece to the region's Ice Age puzzle.
- Pacific mastodons, elephant relatives that once roamed California, Oregon, the northern Rocky Mountains, and parts of Mexico before going extinct more than 10,000 years ago, succumbed to combined climate-driven habitat loss and human overhunting.
- Stanford University's School of Sustainability received the donated molar and will use carbon dating to determine the specimen's precise age.
- Stanford geoscience curator Christine Garcia said fossils are "our only opportunity to see into past biodiversity" and can guide better decisions about how to help future ecosystems thrive.
Why it matters: Stanford researchers now hold what their collaborators call the most complete Pacific mastodon molar from the San Mateo area — a rare, pristine Ice Age specimen that will yield a precise carbon date and add a calibrated data point to ongoing research into how climate shifts and human hunting drove the species extinct.
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