AMERICANALMANAC (Sadie Smith) - Geomorphologist finds remarkably preserved mastodon tooth in San Francisco Bay Area creek
A scientist working to save a threatened frog species stumbled across a fossilized Pacific mastodon molar in a San Mateo County creek bed, a find experts are calling the most complete specimen of its kind from the region. Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist at the consulting firm Balance Hydrologics, was surveying a wooded creek inside a […] The post Geomorphologist finds remarkably preserved mastodon tooth in San Francisco Bay Area creek appeared first on American Almanac .
A scientist working to save a threatened frog species stumbled across a fossilized Pacific mastodon molar in a San Mateo County creek bed, a find experts are calling the most complete specimen of its kind from the region. Brigid Lynch, a geomorphologist at the consulting firm Balance Hydrologics, was surveying a wooded creek inside a Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District preserve in the Santa Cruz Mountains earlier this year when she spotted the nine-inch tooth sitting in plain sight. She was there for a habitat restoration project aimed at protecting the California red-legged frog, a threatened species. Instead, she found the remains of an animal that vanished from North America between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. Lynch told…Open