APTOS — Who said the tooth fairy doesn’t deliver? Sometimes it just takes a couple of hundred thousand years.
The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History added a breathtaking ancient artifact to its collection this week after an almost 12-inch tooth belonging to a mastodon – a mammal from the last ice age similar in appearance to the woolly mammoth – was discovered washed up on a beach in Rio Del Mar.
Museum Visitor Experience Manager Liz Broughton said the prehistoric molar was first discovered, appropriately, near the mouth of Aptos Creek on a misty morning last Friday by Jennifer Schuh, a visiting tourist with ties to the area. Fascinated by the object but not recognizing exactly what it was, Schuh snapped a picture before leaving it where it had come to rest and shared the photo on Facebook.
The post found its way to Wayne Thompson, a paleontology collections adviser to the museum, who quickly identified it as a molar tooth from the Pacific Mastodon or Mammut pacificus.
“He immediately recognized it and got very excited,” said Broughton. “He ran down to the beach to try to find it, but it was unfortunately no longer there. So he put out a call on social media looking for someone to turn it in and give it to the museum and it kind of went viral.”
Captivated community members scoured the landscape during the busy Memorial Day weekend to no avail until longtime Aptos resident Jim Smith stumbled on the tooth while on his regular Tuesday morning jog and brought it to the museum shortly thereafter.
“Awesome news!” commented community member Tamara LaTorree on a Facebook post from Thompson announcing that the molar had been found. “It was driving me nuts thinking about all the possibilities of what might have happened to it so this is truly the very best of news as well as the answer to my pondering.”
Though the long-extinct mastodon was a terrestrial creature, typically found in inland valley regions, Broughton said the fossil was likely unearthed during heavy winter storms earlier this year and carried down the myriad creeks and rivers within the massive regional watershed that drains out of the Santa Cruz coastline.
The skull of a juvenile mastodon was previously discovered in Aptos Creek in 1980 and Thompson was integral to the excavation and meticulous repair efforts needed to put it on public display, where it remains to this day. According to Thompson, the recent specimen clearly comes from an adult mastodon based on how worn the tooth is.
“In general, teeth can tell you a lot about an individual’s habitat and diet and life history,” said Broughton.
She added that the molar is probably less than a million years old, which is relatively young compared to some of the marine fossils typically discovered along the county’s coastline, some of which have been traced back 2-4 million years.
“In the immediate future we’re going to carefully catalog it, prepare it and stabilize it so it is safe for exhibition and as safe as possible long term,” said Broughton.
Broughton added that the museum also intends to make the tooth available to researchers who could use it as a window into the past to better understand how the region’s geography and climate have changed over time.
“Such great news,” wrote K Carlo Salinger on Facebook after hearing the museum was in possession of the fossil. “I look forward to seeing it in person at the museum!”
Broughton was unable to provide an exact date for when the tooth will be exhibited, but took the opportunity to thank the community for its efforts in making this historic discovery possible.
“It’s just really heartwarming,” said Broughton. “It’s ripe for study so we’re excited to dive in and learn more about it.”
