12,000-year-old mammoth tusk found near Big Black River
A Madison man and amateur paleontologist found an intact Columbian mammoth tusk while digging in a creek recently.
Eddie Templeton of Madison spends his weekends looking for fossils and Indian artifacts. On Aug. 3, in a creek just off the Big Black River at an undisclosed location in Madison County, he found a fossilized, seven-foot-long Columbian mammoth tusk believed to be over 12,000 years old.
“It was pretty exciting,” Templeton said. “But of course, I get excited even by some of the smaller stuff I find.”
Templeton said he had discovered the tusk by about 8 a.m. and immediately started making calls.
James Starnes, director of the Surface Geology Division at the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, said he was called out there that morning.
“Eddie finds a lot of interesting things,” Starnes said.
Digging the fossil up and encasing it in a protective coat of plaster took several hours.
“It was an all-day deal,” Templeton said, noting he did not get home until about 8:30 p.m.
The tusk, weighing about 600 pounds in the plaster, was then hauled to the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science for further preservation and study.
“We are going to learn a lot about this animal for a really long time,” Starnes said.
He said the tusk grows for the entire life of the mammoth and they will be able to learn details about the mammoth’s diet, the weather and even the animal’s year-to-year health by studying this tusk.
When this mammoth was alive, it roamed the so-called Jackson Prairie during an Ice Age, according to Starnes. While Mississippi was not covered in ice at the time, it was significantly cooler. He said this would have been around the time humans would have been moving into the area as well.
“Eddie’s discovery offers a rare window into the Columbian mammoths that once roamed Madison County along the Jackson Prairie of central Mississippi,” a statement from MDEQ reads.
Columbian mammoths were much larger than the famous woolly mammoth that roamed the colder, more northern regions of North America. They grew up to 15 feet at the shoulder and could weigh over 10 tons.
These enormous mammals played an important role in maintaining the rich, fertile prairie ecosystem, Starnes said.
This Ice Age prairie ecosystem of what is now Madison County was also home to herds of now extinct horses and giant bison along with giant ground sloths, giant tortoises, and tapirs. It was also home to a number of Ice Age predators such as dire wolves, saber toothed cats, American lion, and even to the earliest human inhabitants of the region.