Puppy digs up 13,000-year-old mammoth tooth

Who’s a good dog! Scout the eight month old Labrador puppy digs up a 13,000-year-old woolly mammoth tooth in his garden

  • Eight-month-old labrador Scout found the artefact in his garden 
  • Analysis from experts revealed it to be a genuine woolly mammoth tooth 
  • It is one of several previous discoveries of mammoth teeth and bones in the area
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A puppy has dug up a 13,000 year-old woolly mammoth tooth in the back garden of his owner’s home. 

Eight-month-old Labrador Scout found the ancient artefact while digging a hole in the yard in Whidbey Island, Washington.  

Owner, Kirk Lacewell, said that he thought the pooch was carrying a rock or piece of wood.

Scout was carrying the item around the following day when Mr Lacewell noticed that it looked ‘odd’. 

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Eight-month-old labrador Scout (pictured) found the ancient artefact while digging a hole in the yard in Whidbey Island, Washington

‘Part of it looked like bone. It looked like bone that had a covering over it and it was partly worn off,’ Lacewell said. 

He sent pictures to experts at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum who confirmed that the item was a woolly mammoth tooth, dating back 13,000 years. 

‘I can’t remember a time when a dog helped uncover a fossil,’ museum spokeswoman Andrea Godinez said.

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Other mammoth teeth and bones have been found on the Whidbey island. 

The extinct giant animals were widespread in the area of Washington during the last Ice Age. 

‘Quite a few mammoth teeth and some bones have been found on Whidbey, which is largely composed of Ice Age sediments,’ Elizabeth A. Nesbitt, curator of paleontology at Burke Museum. 


Scout was carrying the tooth (pictured) around the following day when Mr Lacewell noticed that it looked ‘odd’


Other mammoth teeth and bones have been found on the Whidbey island. The extinct giant animals were widespread in the area of Washington during the last Ice Age 


Experts at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum who confirmed that the item was a woolly mammoth tooth, dating back 13,000 years

The Burke Museum said that the tooth was not rare enough to be included in one of their collections, so it will remain in Mr Lacewell’s house.  

In December 2015, a 10-year-old girl also found a mammoth tooth while walking along the beach on Whidbey Island.

The museum confirmed that it came from a juvenile Columbian mammoth and was between 12,000–30,000 years old.

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE WOOLLY MAMMOTH?

The woolly mammoth roamed the icy tundra of Europe and North America for 140,000 years, disappearing at the end of the Pleistocene period, 10,000 years ago.

They are one of the best understood prehistoric animals known to science because their remains are often not fossilised but frozen and preserved.

Males were around 12 feet (3.5m) tall, while the females were slightly smaller.

Curved tusks were up to 16 feet (5m) long and their underbellies boasted a coat of shaggy hair up to 3 feet (1m) long.

Tiny ears and short tails prevented vital body heat being lost.

Their trunks had ‘two fingers’ at the end to help them pluck grass, twigs and other vegetation.


The Woolly Mammoth is are one of the best understood prehistoric animals known to science because their remains are often not fossilised but frozen and preserved (artist’s impression)

They get their name from the Russian ‘mammut’, or earth mole, as it was believed the animals lived underground and died on contact with light – explaining why they were always found dead and half-buried.

Their bones were once believed to have belonged to extinct races of giants.

Woolly mammoths and modern-day elephants are closely related, sharing 99.4 per cent of their genes.

The two species took separate evolutionary paths six million years ago, at about the same time humans and chimpanzees went their own way.

Woolly mammoths co-existed with early humans, who hunted them for food and used their bones and tusks for making weapons and art. 

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