Mastodon tooth from Ice Age found on California beach

A massive mastodon tooth dating from the Ice Age has been turned into a local museum by a jogger after it was initially discovered on a California beach before disappearing once someone posted the historic find on Facebook.

Photos of the mammoth molar sitting in the sand on Rio Del Mar beach in Santa Cruz County circulated on social media after a tourist who saw the fossil posted her strange find online with the hopes of identifying it.

Wayne Thompson, a paleontology collections advisor for the Santa Cruz County Museum of Natural History, immediately identified the discovery as a Mastodon tooth. He then pleaded with the woman to give him a call about the “extremely important find.”

“I practically hit the floor. It was a mastodon tooth, right in the same area where we know mastodons lived in Santa Cruz County,” Thompson told KRON 4.

However, when Thompson returned to the spot where the tooth was first spotted the following day, it was gone. A call quickly went out to the public to have it returned to the museum

Paleontologists and volunteers dug in the sand throughout the holiday weekend with no success. 

Then on Tuesday, local resident Jim Smith called the museum after seeing the story about the tooth on the news and said he had found it while jogging on the beach, according to Liz Broughton, Visitor Experience Manager at the Museum.

“He was so excited to hear it was a mastodon tooth and was eager to share it with the Museum,” she said.

The museum and Thompson have a long history with mastodons in the area. 

In 1980, a 16-year-old found a mastodon skull in Aptos Creek. Thompson excavated the skill and spent years meticulously piecing it back together. The skull and another tooth are on permanent exhibit at the museum.

The tooth will now be studied and documented at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History before it goes on exhibit for the public to view, according to KRON4.