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Article from last Friday's Daily Press newspaper in southeast Virginia (Hampton Roads), about mastodon bones being found in a local swamp and being curated by the Virginia Living Museum. Interestingly, this discovery was made only 2 miles from where General George Washington and the Continental Army (aided by the French) politely requested Lord General Cornwallis to leave the American Colonies in 1781. http://www.dailypress.com/news/science/dp-nws-mastodon-bones-exhibit-20180123-story.html Cheers, SA2

I am 99% sure this is the start of the tooth, as seen in the last picture (not mine).

This past weekend was the 50th annual Rutgers Geology Museum open house, which was an excellent opportunity to attend guest lectures by professionals and also a chance see the museum's collection. The event was very well attended, and in between lectures (the lecture by Dr. Isaiah Nengo on his work with Nyanzapithecus alesi was excellent) seeing the museum was a hurried, crowded affair. The museum building is a tall 19th century structure with many large tall windows, so on this sunny Saturday sun glare on the glass cases was unfortunately a real and unavoidable problem. Nevertheless, I made an effort to get some photos of the museum to share with TFF. The Mastodon is a Salem County NJ find. Particularly exciting for me as a huge fan of Phytosaurs was seeing their specimen of Rutiodon manhattenensis, which despite its specific name was found on the New Jersey side of the Hudson. Yet another example of New York stealing New Jersey's credit! Hidden in a corner (it was packed in there, things crammed into corners to make room for tables) was a skull of Mosasaurus "maxmimus" which I'd have loved to known more about since it was apparently a New Jersey find. Alas, no more info than that. Next to it was a cast of the original find Mosasaurus hoffmanii from the Netherlands, which was neat to see in real scale.

After working 28 thirteen hour days offshore I couldn't wait any longer to hunt so I headed to my favorite Northeast Texas creek. The temp when I left was 20 degrees which is really cold for my area. The creek was frozen but I had still had some area to hunt. I walked for miles and didn't find much then ended up finding everything around the bridge where I parked lol. I found more artifacts than fossils but did manage to find a Mosasaur vert & Mastodon tooth enamel.

All offers are welcome. I'm not looking to trade everything together, just willing to trade some of it. The black mammoth partial was collected in the US. The complete mammoth tooth is from the north sea I believe, and measures over 9" long. I am not sure where the mastodon teeth are from, but I got them from a very reputable member of this forum. Some of my favorite fossils are shark teeth, trilobites, ammonites, and stuff I can prep myself with electric engravers. Again, All offers are welcome!

Did Ice Age Cause Mastodon Extinction? New Research Suggest Several Causes Central Washington University, Oct. 29, 2017 http://www.cwu.edu/did-ice-age-cause-mastodon-extinction-new-research-suggest-several-causes Emery-Wetherell, Meaghan M., Brianna K. McHorse, and Edward Byrd Davis. "Spatially explicit analysis sheds new light on the Pleistocene megafaunal extinction in North America." Paleobiology (2017): 1-14. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319333874_Spatially_explicit_analysis_sheds_new_light_on_the_Pleistocene_megafaunal_extinction_in_North_America https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/paleobiology/article/spatially-explicit-analysis-sheds-new-light-on-the-pleistocene-megafaunal-extinction-in-north-america/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/paleobiology/article/spatially-explicit-analysis-sheds-new-light-on-the-pleistocene-megafaunal-extinction-in-north-america/A3EBE9B5067CFFB821F4EDC81962421D Another paper is: Brault, M.O., Mysak, L.A., Matthews, H.D. and Simmons, C.T., 2013. Assessing the impact of late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions on global vegetation and climate. Climate of the Past, 9(4), p.1761. https://www.clim-past.net/9/1761/2013/cp-9-1761-2013.pdf https://search.proquest.com/docview/1430895281?pq-origsite=gscholar http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.799.8882&rep=rep1&type=pdf Yours, Paul H.

After a recent post by new member Kyen I decided to post this tooth I found a while back on the Colorado River, TX. I assumed it to be mastodon, but after looking at pics that @Harry Pristis posted, I would like to know if this could be senile gomph chunk?

It was a beautiful day at the North Sulphur River in Ladonia, Texas. The river is nearly dry, so visibility was really good for searching. I sifted around the puddles and gravel bars and I found several pieces of baculite, a small gastropod (I love those), and a small piece of tooth enamel (mastodon I believe?) I always love finding that... even if it’s a small piece!

So I found this tooth over a decade ago while canoeing down a local river. I always have had little flakes coming off and I finally decided to see if I could find a way to keep it from falling apart. It is only flaking off from the root of the tooth. Any help would be appreciated.

Found this in the salinas riverbed near Paso Robles California. Found a shoulder blade to a mastodon just a year ago in almost the same location. Could use a second opinion.

As noted in another thread, I purchased 5 pre-Equus teeth from a hunting friend, who used to work as a dragline operator in a Bone Valley Phosphate Mine. There were evidently perks of such a job. While looking at the horse teeth, I saw what I believed to be a miniature Mastodon tooth with some roots and a little bit of jaw material. I thought TFF members would appreciate seeing it as much as I did.

Short 3 hr NSR hunt between the 35 ft rise and the current 8 ft rise. I had very little area to hunt but still had a great day. The Tylosaur jaw section made my day. My new 4x4 saved me once again when I slid down the ditch while parking.

It was my first time hunting in awhile due to my crazy work schedule. Since we haven't had a good rain I figured it would be picked over. I found some really nice Mosasaur verts, coprolite and my best Clidastes jaw section yet with multiple replacement teeth showing. The fish vert is from one of the large Cretaceous fish probably Xiphactinus. The artifacts, Gastropods, Enchodus tooth, Mastodon tooth enamel and other Pleistocene tooth were a nice bonus. You can see little bones in all the coprolite. I will hit it again next week for sure.

...at least for me for this season. I'll be out of the country over the next two weekends and then off to Greece on vacation for most of June so I'll likely not get another chance at hunting the Peace River this season unless something really unusual happens with the weather. I expect rainy season to have started by the time I'm back from Greece and the Peace will likely be several feet higher that it is at the moment. Currently, the Peace is as low as I've seen it this season. During a heavy drought several years back I've seen the Peace about a foot lower than it is now which made for a long trip from Brownville to Arcadia with a lot of time out of the canoe pushing it over shallow sandy areas. Yesterday, we had to get out a number of times and that combined with the headwind we fought all the way back to Arcadia meant we had to allocate more travel time which left less time for digging and sifting. On the (Canoe Outpost) bus ride up from Arcadia to Brownville we spotted a couple sitting the seat in front of us who looked to be new to fossil hunting on the Peace. They had loaner sifting screens and a shovel from Canoe Outpost and I figured we might help introduce them to a fun (and addicting) passtime. We hadn't planned on spending much time at the large (well-known and hard-hit) gravel bed just downstream from Brownville but changed our plans to help Mike and Samantha (if I haven't misremembered their names by now--names, not my strong suit). After a brief stop before the main gravel bed we stopped at another area with very chunky gravel that is even closer to the boat ramp at Brownville. This area is well within walking distance from Brownville Park and I suspect it gets hit hard by walk-ins. Lots of gravel to be found at that spot but it wasn't even giving up small shark teeth so we soon moved down to the primary gravel bed near Brownville. I gave some tips and pointers on how to hunt the area and let them use our larger sifting screen with 1/4" mesh while we poked around with the 1/"2 mesh sifter trying to find an area that was producing fossils. The gravel bed at this location is virtually from bank to bank and runs for somewhere between 100-150 feet so it is not a tiny area. Even though it is large it is by no means cryptic and it attracts lots of attention. Evidence of holes and piles litter the bottom here (till they are erased like a big Etch-a-sketch each summer during flood stage). The big trick to hunting this site is to find some place where you are not digging through someone's spoils. Prospecting lots of sites in this location till you hit an area that is producing some nice finds is the best way (IMHO) of working this location. We poked around without much luck till we found an area that my probe told me had some gravel under a topping of sand. Within a few minutes digging there I pulled out a rather large chunk of giant tortoise (Hesperotestudo) carapace that should have been identified and kept by any previous hunters. This made me feel more certain about spending more effort in this spot. Before long we were pulling out some larger shark teeth (and fraglodons) as well as a few other things like gator teeth and mammoth and mastodon tooth fragments. Every so often I'd bring over some donated finds to our new "students" so they could start to understand the diversity of finds that can be pulled from the Peace. I continued to dig in the spot we finally landed on as it was giving up a variety of small prizes which were useful in demonstrating the types of things to look for in the Peace. Shark teeth are relatively easy to find and identify but more obscure fossils require obtaining a search image to be able to spot effectively. Shortly after I had shown the river's two newest fossil hunters a small piece of mammoth tooth we pulled something interesting out of our sifting screen. Tammy got to it first (she works the sifter while I man the shovel). Initially, she thought it was an odd piece of turtle shell (a good assumption as the Peace has lots of varied pieces of turtle and tortoise carapace). She had picked it up and was holding it sideways. I took it from her to look closer and upon rotating it saw the occlusal surface. "Horse tooth," I said instantly seeing the crenulated enamel ridges on the top of the tooth. But something was odd about it--it just didn't look right. Lower horse teeth are more narrow and elongated (better to fit into the narrow lower jawbone) while upper horse molars are more squarish. This piece wasn't quite square nor was it as elongated as a lower tooth should be. It was the right size for an Equus molar but the square peg just wasn't fitting into the round hole. Finally, the penny dropped and I excitedly understood why this horse molar looked so odd--it wasn't equine at all! It was mammoth--BABY mammoth! I went over to show this new find to our fossil partners do jour and while I was explaining to them how you could tell it was mammoth (by the very characteristic bands and loops of enamel sandwiched together with layers of cementum) Tammy came over and said, "Guess what I found?" I hadn't a clue--the Peace can give up a wide variety of items. She held out in her hand another chunk of baby mammoth tooth--one entire loop of enamel. It only took a few seconds to verify that this piece fit neatly into the chunk we had just found--the tooth was growing! You can be sure we dug around in that spot for another hour or more but never found another scrap of this tiny tooth. Likely it had previously fragmented on its path from where it was eroded out of the river bank to the spot we recovered it. The two pieces had probably recently separated but didn't make it far from each other--they may have even separated just with the agitation of shaking the sand out of the sifting screen. I'm glad we were able to reunite this pieces. Still, by no means a complete baby mammoth molar but a good size chunk and my trip-maker for the day. I had originally planned on skipping past this location and prospecting some other gravel spots we have hunted in the past but haven't tried for several years. I'm glad the decision to instruct some newbie fossil hunters paid off so quickly with fossil Karma. Before too long our new acquaintances headed off down river and we soon gave up our search for any more of this molar and continued down as well. On the way down we spotted a large gator in the same spot as we saw one when we were there last time. It looked to be about the same size (9-10 foot) and I suspect it was the same individual in its current favorite sunning spot. We prospected a bit here and there but had spend so much time near Brownville that we wanted to make it down to our favorite spot near Oak Hill. We stopped again at this location to hunt for a bit because it has chunky gravel and sometimes gives up nice prizes. Mostly, it's just big chunks of matrix with lots of dugong rib bones and very few shark teeth but this is the same spot that gave up two nice gator osteoderms last time out. The water is quite low without much current at the moment. If fact, the wind that was blowing steadily from the south was actually pushing my sifting screen upstream. You can see from the photos below that the water is also quite cloudy as there is a major algae bloom going on presently. This is making the normally tea-colored clear river water quite opaque and greenish. Vertical visibility is less than a foot. This lack of clarity is not impacting fossil hunting too much but it makes the paddling downstream more difficult as it is making the sand bars and deeper water channels more difficult to discern. Hidden logs below the surface are also more difficult to see making for more dangerous navigation. We had to think more while traveling but since we know this stretch of the river pretty well we didn't have major difficulties. Here I am enjoying the Peace for my final trip of the season. This second stop of the day didn't give up any large prizes but did produce a nice diversity of items. The second find of the day was this tiny jaw with several molars in place. It looks to be something from the a rodent or lagomorph but I'll need to spend more time getting an ID on this.

I love to find complete teeth with those roots. Just adds excitement!!! However, I did not jump up and down on this one because I did not see the details when it showed up in my screen. It was sitting on top of a fraglodon -- otherwise it would have slipped through the screen back from whence it came. Note the wear on the cusps in this 2nd photo!!! SO, what is in the Mastodon family but has teeth that you can barely see?> All suggestions and comments encouraged and appreciated.

Humans in California 130,000 years ago? Bold study says it's possible Humans in California 130,000 years ago? Bold study says it's possible, CBS News, April 26, 2017 http://www.cbsnews.com/news/humans-in-california-130000-years-ago-bold-study-says-its-possible/ Holen, S. R., T. A. Deméré, and others, 2017, A 130,000- year-old archaeological site in southern California, USA Nature 544, 479–483 (27 April 2017) doi:10.1038/nature2206 https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v544/n7651/full/nature22065.html Yours, Paul H.

Found in the Austin, Texas area. Previously a mastodon tooth or gomphothere. I thought Mosasaur at first look. Then elephant cranium fragment. One side has a def. curve with thin outer bone layering. Inward is pitted similar to pitted and highly porous Mammoth cranium I have found. I will slip an all 4 sides photo of the fragment in a second.

Okay, So... I don't really need help to ID this recent find. I just wanted to show it off. I really enjoy and appreciate this forum... so many knowledgeable and helpful people here.

Hello everyone! I know I recently reported on my major bucket-lister fossil, a four-inch tooth from the shark Carcharocles angustidens. Well...I think I may have just knocked another one off the list. Let me first say that I have a very limited knowledge of ice age mammal material, but this does seem to resemble examples of Mastodon (Mammut americanum) that I've seen before, which would make it a first for me. South Carolina doesn't exactly have the reputation for mammal material that Florida and Texas have, so this is a particularly gratifying find. Im curious about the size and degree of wear on this tooth. Am I correct in assuming that this tooth belonged to a juvenile individual? If so, why so much wear to the feeding surface? This is the first mammal tooth that I've found at the location that the Oligocene-age marine fossils I post. How did this one small vestige of the Pleistocene end up among Oligocene-Miocene marine material? Here she is -

NSR is dry and footprints everywhere but I still had a great day. The Mosasaur Angular with shark feeding marks & possible shark tooth embedded is my favorite.

Hi Everyone, Looking for a little help identifying a tooth I purchased at a recent Florida fossil show. It was labelled Mastodon but I was wondering if it might be Gomphothere? It was found in one of the rivers in Florida I understand which means it could have been either as I understand it. Couldn't find an easy identifier online. Thanks in advance Tom