A complete mastodon jaw has been discovered in the backyard of a New York home, along with a few other bits and pieces of the prehistoric herbivore, an extinct relative of modern elephants.
The first hints came in late September, when the resident found two giant teeth in the shade of some plant leaves on his property near Scotchtown, Orange County. A little digging revealed two more teeth, just a few inches underground.
“When I found the teeth and examined them in my hands, I knew it was something special,” said the homeowner, who did not want to be identified.
The man decided to enlist professionals from the New York State Museum and SUNY (State University of New York) Orange to investigate further.
Their excavation uncovered a complete adult mastodon jaw (genus Mammut), along with part of a toe bone and a fragment of a rib.
“While the jaw is the star of the show, the additional toe and rib fragments provide valuable context and potential for additional research,” said SUNY Orange anthropologist Cory Harris.
“We also hope to explore the immediate area further to see if there are any more bones.”
The team has yet to reveal the mastodon’s species or other details. It is being analyzed by scientists to determine its age, diet and habitat, as well as radiocarbon dating to find out how long these bones have been lingering in the shallow mud of the Empire State.
Evolutionary ecologist Robert Feranec, curator of Ice Age animals at the New York State Museum, says the latest find is a testament to the state’s rich paleontological history.
“This mastodon jaw provides a unique opportunity to study the ecology of this beautiful species, which will advance our understanding of the Ice Age ecosystems in this region,” he says.
“Fossils are resources that provide remarkable snapshots of the past, allowing us not only to reconstruct ancient ecosystems but also to provide us with better context and understanding of the current world around us.”
More than 150 mastodon fossils have been found in New York State, and about a third of them came from Orange County. But it has been eleven years since the last discovery of this species.
Most of the museum’s 16,000 local fossil specimens are about 15,000 years old, which puts them squarely in the Late Pleistocene.
Many of these have been excavated from caves in Orange County, such as the Dutchess Quarry Caves, which also preserve valuable artifacts left behind by prehistoric hunter-gatherers during the last ice age 12,000 years ago, including a very rare Paleo-Indian stone tool called a fluted point is mentioned. .
Earth had a drastically different climate during the Late Pleistocene, which stretched from about 129,000 to 11,700 years ago. It was much colder, with huge glaciers freezing the world’s oceans and forming icy land bridges.
One of these bridges allowed people to migrate from Siberia to Alaska, but whether this was the first human migration to North America is a matter of debate among experts.
In North America, approximately 35 different species of megafauna were wiped out during the Late Pleistocene, including mastodons. The fossils of these giants are spread across the continent, from the west coast to the east and even to Florida, and their remains are often linked to the issue of human arrival on the continent, and our role in the extinction of these animals.
We have yet to hear whether this newly discovered mastodon will elaborate on the subject – that will depend on evidence of some prehistoric human interference with bones, and how old the bones actually are.
“Every discovery like this brings us one step closer to piecing together the full story of New York,” Feranec said.
