Jun 10, 2019 2 min read

Mastodon Tooth

Mastodons, relatives of the prehistoric woolly mammoth, roamed the Eurasian and North American continents about 20,000 years ago. Their fossils are scattered largely throughout the northeastern region of America. The two prominent differences between the mammoth and the mastodon is between their size and the shape of their teeth. The woolly mammoth is about twice the size of the North American mastodon, which is more similar to the size of elephants living today. The shape of the mastodon’s teeth, also, is distinctly different from those of the woolly mammoth. This disparity also reveals to scientists that the mastodon and mammoth had different diets. Mammoths had flat and tall, ridged molars that look like washboards, while the mastodon had simple, molar-like teeth. The first European fossil discovery of mastodons was reported in 1705 by Cotton Mather, a Puritan clergyman. Uncovering a tooth, he believed, however, that he had found the remnants of the biblical giants described to have been destroyed by the flood.

The tooth shown here was found in Ten Mile Creek in Amwell Township by Hugh Curry when he was a boy. It was donated to the Washington County Historical Society upon his death at the age of 87 in 1921.

Clay Kilgore is executive director of the Washington County Historical Society.