14 DAY TRIAL // After Hurricane Ike destroyed her house on the beach in Caplen, on the ravaged Bolivar Peninsula in Texas, paleontologist Dorothy Sisk discovered the fossilized remains of a mammoth tooth.
Soon after the disaster, Dorothy Sisk asked her colleague, Jim Westgate, a trained paleontologist from the Lamar University and a research associate at the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory from the University of Texas Memorial Museum, to go with her and evaluate the aftermath together.
However, a surprise was in store for both at the respective location, one that would somewhat compensate for the loss. Amidst the debris left behind the hurricane, the two recognized the football-sized remains of a portion of a mammoth tooth, which, later on, they dated to about 10,000 years ago. “It was while we were looking at the house, or at least what was left of the foundation, that I saw it lying there with lots of shell debris in what had been the front yard,” explained Westgate.
Weighing 6 pounds (2.7 kg), the fossil resembles bread slices joined together, or a boot sole. It probably belonged to a specimen of Columbian Mammoth, the ancestor of the modern days’ elephant, common to the northern part of the American continent until about 10,000 years ago, together with their mastodon relatives. Similar to the elephants, mammoths also grew 3 pairs of teeth during their whole lifetime, replacing the old, worn ones “like a shotgun, loading a newly formed tooth in its place,” according to Westgate. The condition of the discovered tooth indicated that it had not been not worn, so the researchers believe it was either a new tooth or one that was waiting to emerge upon the animal's death.
The object of the discovery is expected to be donated and exposed at the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin. The other 1 million victims fleeing from the hurricane's wrath don't seem to be as lucky yet.