Mammoth tooth vs old Asian elephant tooth?

[REK]

I'm shopping for a mammoth tooth online, where I have no way of assessing the seller.  Is there some way to be sure I'm buying a 20,000 year old fossil instead of a 200 year old tooth from an elephant?  To a nooby like me, they look a lot alike.

 

The web has lots of commentary on mammoth vs mastodon, meridionalis vs woolly, upper vs lower, and the like--but I'm not finding any guidance on how to tell if the tooth is the real McCoy.

[caldigger]

Can you post a picture?

[JohnJ]

Post photos, only, of the specimens, here, and members can offer their opinions.  Proboscidean teeth are rarely faked. 

[FossilDudeCO]

I have been looking for old elephant teeth from before the ivory ban and it is VERY difficult.

The fossil ones actually tend to be cheaper than the modern ones!

So I don't think you should have too much of an issue  

[REK]

Thanks for responding. No particular pictures to post because I'm still just perusing the offerings as they come along. 

 

I am wondering whether there is some distinguishing feature (in either the old or the new) that I should look for.  

[digit]

Unless someone is seriously trying to pass off a modern elephant molar for a mammoth fossil (which I've not heard of but then again I don't buy fossils) I would expect that they would be real and not faked. I suppose someone could get access to modern elephant molars and then try dying them to turn them dark brown or black to mimic the coloration of the fossil. A modern day fossil fake would have to start with an Indian Elephant (rather than an African Elephant) as the pattern of the enamel ridges is quite different from the mammoth in the African (but similar in the Indian). See the image I was able to find here online (African on the left, Indian on the right):

 

 

I'm no expert in mammoth molar fossils (though I did manage to find a nice complete one in the Peace River a while back). I probably don't have the required knowledge to tell a stained modern Indian Elephant molar from a true fossil mammoth molar from photos alone. If I had one in hand the weight difference should be apparent as my fully mineralized mammoth tooth weighs in at just under 13 pounds. I think I've read that a whole elephant tooth is more on the order of 4-5 pounds. If you had a specimen to test, the match test would also let you know if it was a mineralized fossil or a modern tooth still containing large amounts of proteins. A whiff of burning hair smell would indicate modern whereas no smell would indicate that the proteins in the enamel broken down and been replaced with minerals. I do believe that the number of oval plates of enamel can be diagnostic in determining the species though this obviously only works on whole teeth that have not been worn down and lost plates.

 

This is the extent of (and a little beyond) my knowledge of mammoth molars. Hope this helps. Best tool for not buying faked fossils is to buy from a reputable seller and to be very suspicious of fossils priced way too cheap.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[REK]

Thanks, Ken. Your point about the weight is a good one!

[Carcharodontosaurus]

I've never heard of elephant teeth being passed off as mammoth. Mammoth teeth are much more common to acquire than elephant, and unlike the latter, they are not protected or regulated by the CITES treaty. Anyone passing off modern elephant material as mammoth could get into serious trouble.

[digit]

Yup. Doesn't seem to make sense to risk CITES issues by passing off a modern elephant for a mammoth but then shifty sellers passing off faked fossils don't seem to play by the rules or care about consequences. The only reason I could think for "aging" a modern Indian Elephant tooth to pass off as a mammoth would be to charge very high prices for a "fossil" tooth in pristine condition. I've heard of unscrupulous sellers staining skulls of animals like raccoons or deer and claiming them to be fantastically preserved Pleistocene specimens but haven't heard anybody faking mammoth molars.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[REK]

I appreciate the various comments.  I’ve been doing a bit of research, and here is what I am learning.  Please correct me where I’ve gone astray.

 

First, my real concern is not so much that an unscrupulous seller would try to fabricate a fake.  I agree that it probably would not be worth the effort.  However, how do some of these sellers know what they’re selling?  I suspect that in many cases, they don’t have access to any reliable provenance for the tooth but may be just reselling what somebody found in Grandpa’s closet after he died. 

 

So, my question is really more about accurately identifying what is obviously an old molar that somebody dug up somewhere at some time, which might be from a mammoth but might be just an Asian elephant tooth that had been lying in the ground for a few hundreds (or even thousands) of years.  [Perhaps this discussion should be in the sub forum on fossil identification.]

 

We can readily ignore teeth from modern African elephants because, as the picture that Ken posted shows, the ridges are radically different (trapezoidal).  But Asian elephant teeth look a lot like mammoth teeth, at least to me, at this point.  They have lots of ridges.

 

So, I start with the following excerpt from the Wikipedia article on Mammoths that suggests that ridge count might be significant:

 

“The first known members of the genus Mammuthus are the African species M. subplanifrons from the Pliocene and M. africanavus from the Pleistocene. The former is thought to be the ancestor of later forms. Mammoths entered Europe around 3 million years ago; the earliest known type has been named M. rumanus, which spread across Europe and China. Only its molars are known, which show it had 8–10 enamel ridges. A population evolved 12–14 ridges and split off from and replaced the earlier type, becoming M. meridionalis. In turn, this species was replaced by the steppe mammoth, M. trogontherii, with 18–20 ridges, which evolved in East Asia ca. 1 million years ago. Mammoths derived from M. trogontherii evolved molars with 26 ridges 200,000 years ago in Siberia, and became the woolly mammoth, M. primigenius. The Columbian mammoth, M. columbi, evolved from a population of M. trogontherii that had entered North America.”

 

At face value, this would be a handy means to identify a whole tooth, but it raises several issues:  First, in the slow course of evolution I assume that the number of ridges did not suddenly jump from one range to the next on some sunny morning when a new species came into existence.  Isn’t it likely that molars with just about any number of ridges might be found?  Second, I spoke this morning with someone in the Elephant Department at the Syracuse Zoo (they have a number of Asian elephants), and he confirmed that, at least in his modern elephants, an elephant’s earlier molars are not only smaller but have relatively fewer ridges.  So, maybe Wikipedia is talking about the ridge count in mature animals, only.  Fewer ridges might just indicate that it came from a younger animal.

 

Adding to my puzzlement is the array of specimens that don’t look like what I would expect.  Here are pictures of four current offerings labeled as “Woolly Mammoth” teeth, all of which by my count have nowhere near two dozen ridges (which other available specimens do exhibit).  I hasten to add that I am suggesting that these are not what they are represented to be--I just raise the question of how someone can tell from the appearance?  With the little knowledge that I have, I would have guessed them to be from an earlier species, as suggested in the Wikipedia article.

 

One very informative gallery of molar specimens can be found at http://www.henskensfossils.nl, impressively labeled by species and other details.  Certainly seems authoritative—but I confess that my untrained eye has trouble finding consistency or telltale features that would confirm that a given tooth is in fact a genuine mammoth fossil of a particular species.  What am I overlooking?

 

So, I’m still wondering if there is any way to distinguish mammoth teeth from modern teeth by the overall appearance or structure?  Ken made a good point earlier about the weight of the specimen, and maybe the best clue involves the material itself.  I start with zero knowledge about mineralization or fossilization or whatever might indicate that a tooth has been in the ground for a very, very long time—but I am anxious to learn if someone can point me in the right direction.

[digit]

The teeth above do all look different proving that there is not just a single "correct" look that can be used for comparison to guarantee a mammoth molar. Each quarter jaw (upper/lower & left/right) generally has only a single tooth (though the new one may apparently emerge as the last of the tooth it is replacing is still being pushed out so I guess there may be an instance in time where there are more than the usual four teeth). I believe most proboscideans with these "conveyor-belt" teeth will go through a series of six teeth during its lifetime (and then starve to death if it outlives its supply of molars). Given that mastodon teeth look totally different, I suspect they may operate differently but never really checked (time to do some online learning).

 

Over the course of a lifetime the new replacement teeth get progressively larger as the animal grows and is capable of supporting the larger molars. I have a baby mammoth molar (actually a partial but a good portion of it). It is very narrow and is likely the one of the very first set. Image A above is likely smaller as it probably comes from an intermediate size (and age) individual. Images C & D appear to be full size teeth from older individuals. The partial tooth in image B looks like it has been cut and polished to accent the structure. Keep in mind that mammoth (and elephant) molars tend to be a bit triangular shaped with deeper roots at the back of the tooth and thinner at the front. As the tooth is worn down by chewing it slowly rises and pushes forward. Look at tooth D above (with the narrow front of the tooth pictured to the left). Picture this in place in the jaw being slowly worn away on the occlusal surface. As the tooth slowly disappears it becomes shorter and shorter till only the bottom portion of the back of the tooth remains. At some point this tooth gets ejected during normal use when there is too little of it to keep it in place. The replacement tooth then takes over for the next number of years. I believe elephants live anywhere from around 50 to as much as 60-70 years. During this time they have a supply of six sets of molars. Assuming the early small teeth might not last as long as the larger adult teeth (seems reasonable) then a tooth may remain active for something like 8-10 years (or possibly longer) before its term of service is complete.

 

You can see that as a tooth is used up that the rows of the enamel and cementum layer cake would slowly decrease making identification even more difficult when just counting the number of enamel ridges. To truly be certain you'd probably have to be looking at a complete (brand new to service tooth) or be able to judge the total number by measuring the row spacing and estimating the full size of the complete tooth. Proboscidean teeth are complicated and it takes people with a lot more knowledge than me to understand them as this is the limit of my knowledge on the subject.

 

I think it still comes down to knowing your seller if you are buying a mammoth tooth. If you find one in the field and you know there are no elephants in Florida dropping teeth in the river these days, you can be pretty certain of its authenticity. Ringling Brothers Circus is based in Sarasota, FL but I certainly hope they are not the source of any proboscidean molars I find in the Peace River.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken