Wow…Another mammoth tooth

Jake Hogan has had uncanny good luck in finding prehistoric bones in our area. Last week he and his son Steve were searching on the Grand River when Steve, after about an hour of looking, unearthed a mammoth tooth on a rock bar.

The tooth is shaped very much like the juvenile mammoth tooth Jake found last week. This one is darker in color and seems to be in a little better shape.

"It took me about four years to get interested in looking," said Steve. "Now I’m hooked."

The area where they made their find was about a mile or so up river from the spot on Muddy Creek where Jake found the first mammoth tooth a couple of weeks ago.

"I thought I was catching up," Steve said. "Then Dad pulled that up."

What Jake pulled up was a jaw bone with teeth intact. Jake showed the fossil to a scientist at Northwest Missouri State University who identified the jawbone as belonging to a Mastodon. The scientist told them the mammoth and the Mastodon were in the same family, though they were about a thousand years apart in the time they roamed the earth.

Jake said he thought the May floods were bringing up the bones.

"I’d like to find the whole animal," he said.

Jake and Steve are presently undecided as to what to do with their finds.