‘Old Stump’ in Texas Turns Out to Be Incredibly Rare Mammoth Tusk

While hunting in West Texas, a deer hunter spotted a strange object in a creek bed. Suspecting it might be a fossil, he took a photo and showed it to a ranch manager. “I was skeptical,” O2 Ranch manager Will Juett said in a Sul Ross State University statement. “I figured it was likely just an old stump, but imagined how great it would be if he was right.” The deer hunter was right, and the discovery was more than great, because it wasn’t just any fossil. An interdisciplinary team of researchers identified it as a mammoth tusk, an incredibly rare find for West Texas. After seeing the hunter’s photograph, Juett contacted Center for Big Bend Studies (CBBS) director Bryon Schroeder and archaeologist Erika Blecha. They, in turn, reached out to Haley Bjorklund, a CBBS collaborator and University of Kansas graduate student specializing in environmental archaeology. After two other anthropologists joined their efforts, the researchers met at the ranch to investigate what the hunter had foun ... Read full article.