Scientists unearth massive 7-foot-long mammoth tusk
MADISON COUNTY, Miss. (WLBT/Gray News) - A mammoth discovery was made by scientists in Mississippi on Friday.
The Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) said geological survey scientists received a message about a Columbian mammoth ivory discovery made by Eddie Templeton.
According to MDEQ, Templeton was exploring in rural Madison County looking for fossils when he stumbled upon what looked like a portion of an ice-age elephant tusk sticking out of a steep embankment.
Templeton and the team then spent the entire day carefully removing the clay-like sand alluvial Pleistocene matrix by hand from around the tusk.
After that task, the entirety of the 7-foot-long fossil was revealed.
Because the tusk was entirely intact, the discovery became an extremely rare find for Mississippi. Most mammoth tusks in the state are found in fragments and come from more common mammoths.
The region of North America that would become the state of Mississippi was once home to the mastodon, gomphothere and the Columbian mammoth, according to MDEQ.
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