A nine-year-old boy found an ancient mastodon tooth when he was walking through a creek near his home in Lansing, Michigan.
A nine-year-old boy found an ancient mastodon tooth when he was walking through a creek near his home in Lansing, Michigan.
Philip Stoll, the boy who made the discovery, is known in his neighborhood as ‘Huckleberry Phil,’ after the title character from the Mark Twain book, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.’
Phil brought the tooth home, rinsed it off in the sink, and checked to see if it was magnetic.
The boy and his mother did some internet research, trying to find out what the large tooth like object could be.
Then, they decided to contact professor James Harding from Michigan State University, an expert on reptiles and amphibians, who identified the object as a mastodon tooth.
The tooth is brown colored, around eight inches long, and has six peaks.
Philip said that when he grows up he might want to be a paleontologist, a desire that has only deepened with his first significant ancient discovery.
Mastodons were large, hairy pachyderm animals similar to wooly mammoths, that lived around ten thousand years ago, alongside early humans.
Professor Harding says that mastodon remains are found every few years in Michigan, like when two young boys found a mastodon vertebrae while fishing near the city of Detroit two years ago.
