Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/14/boy-finds-massive-woolly-mammo.html
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Boy if that tooth could talk…
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I hope the finders-keepers rule applies and he does get to keep his find.
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One of the intriguing things about elephant teeth is their evolution. Elephants are functionally ungulates, indeed, the most ungulaty of ungulates, with the largest fermenting stomach and the toughest plant-based diet, and of course teeth designed to deal with the constant wearing down that a heavy plant-based diet causes.
But they’re not ungulates – they’re not even dimly related to them, so the strategies that their teeth developed to survive that diet happened in a completely parallel evolution to all the other hoofed mammals that surround them.
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Mammoth tooth aren’t especially rare. You can buy one for a few hundred $/€.
They’re kinda brittle though. Once upon a time I bought a few for the guides at the museum to pass around for visiting school groups. They didn’t last very long.
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Hen’s teeth, on the other hand…
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“I would like to have my tooth back in my hands as soon as possible."
A Woolly. Mammoth. Tooth.
I shudder to think what kind of tooth fairy would show up… much less what she…he… it!!?… would leave under his pillow. Pleasant dreams, little boy. Pleasant dreams.
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It would tell us the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth! 
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Beelzebub and his dastardly trickery
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Nah, that’s dinosaurs. We know that cavemen and mammoths were cavorting around together somewhere’s about 6000 years ago right?
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Dentine in Ohio.
We may never know whether losing that molar marked the beginning of the end for that mammoth - or if it was dislodged after the end.
I had to look up woolly mammoth vs. mastodon, so in case anyone else is interested:
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Well, Wiki sez the very last ones died out about 3,500 years ago on Wrangel Island, so … yes?
On the other hand …
An estimated 150 million mammoths are buried in the frozen Siberian tundra
… and the Arctic is melting (and burning).
ZOMBIE MAMMOTH APOCALYPSE!!!1!
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God. Please. Anything but this (waves hand at news).
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not forgetting the sabra tooth tiger effect
Oh, wait . . .
Man, you folks with your facts and all. Just have to ruin a perfectly good young earth creationism joke…
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I have the feeling @pesco missed an alliteration headline. Something something mammoth molar.
Also, currently reading Jasper Fforde’s Early riser, still waiting for a mammoth to turn up. He seems to like mammoths. I, for one, am not sure I ever would have liked to meet a herd of those. The closest I got was Loxodonta africana at approximately three meters, and I had enough of that to tell the story for a lifetime.
If anyone is interested: don’t let them get between you and your Hilux. Not that a Hilux is safe, but it feels much better. (Also, it was not perceived as a threat by the heard, which was great.)
