An amateur fossil hunter found a 7-foot-long mammoth tusk that's thousands of years old — take a look

Templeton is an amateur fossil hunter in the sense that he doesn't do it for a living. But he's no rookie to the endeavor.

When he was a child, Templeton's neighbor found a mastodon tooth, which initially sparked his interest in these Ice Age animals.

In the decades since, he's found Paleoindian artifacts and teeth from extinct horses but nothing like the mammoth tusk.

Templeton often looks at creeks' gravel beds and banks for fossils. Sometimes erosion can expose bones that have been buried for thousands of years, Templeton said.

While wading in a couple feet of water, Templeton noticed the tusk exposed in the bank, partially below the waterline.

"I found other mastodon fossils in this creek, and I've never found a mammoth fossil of any sort ever, so I just assumed it was a mastodon tusk," he said.

It helped that he knew what to look for. Others may have mistaken it for a tree root, he said.

Mammoths, mastodons, and modern elephants are all related. The tusk of this mammoth, in particular, belongs to a Columbian mammoth. These animals were larger than the stereotypical woolly types.

Reaching 13 feet tall at the shoulder, these giants' ancestors arrived in North America around 1.5 million years ago. By contrast, mastodons lived in North America for 16 million years, which may be one reason their fossils are more common and why Templeton initially thought he'd found a mastodon tusk.

Mastodon or mammoth, though, both are exceptional finds if you come across one. It required just the right conditions for something as large as these behemoths to become fossilized.

"It takes a certain type of chemical environment, number one, to preserve it, but it also takes some sort of catastrophic event to bury it quickly," said James Starnes, a geologist with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality.

The tusk weighs a couple hundred pounds, so Templeton was going to need some help moving it. That's why he contacted Starnes.

It was about 8:30 in the morning when Starnes got the text. He and his colleagues are used to dealing with what he calls fossil emergencies.

"Our spouses know that we can get called on any minute to go grab one of these things," Starnes said.

It was important to move the tusk quickly so it didn't start to deteriorate in the heat.

To help preserve and transport the tusk with minimal damage, Starnes, Templeton, and Jonathan Leard, another MDEQ employee, covered it in foil and made a jacket of burlap and plaster. With the plaster cover, it weighed 600 pounds.

There was a 50-foot bluff they had to haul it up to get to a truck.

"It was an all-day affair," Starnes said.

Templeton's discovery is exciting for a couple of reasons.

First, it's rare — "we don't really have a whole lot of these animals represented in our fossil record," Starnes said. And second, it's nearly complete, including the tusk's tip.

The fact that it was a tusk is also great news for experts because tusks contain a lot more information about a mammoth than, say, a leg bone.

"We can tell about this whole animal's life by studying the tusk," Starnes said.

Mammoths accumulated layers to their tusks each year similar to tree rings, preserving a record of where they were and whether there was enough to eat.

While the tusk's examination is still in its early days, previous research on other mammoth tusks shows just how much Starnes and his colleagues can learn.

Earlier this year, scientists published a paper tracing a 14,000-year-old woolly mammoth's movements through Canada and Alaska based on an analysis of just her tusk.

The tusk will hopefully be ready to show at the Mississippi Museum of Natural Science's fossil roadshow in March, Starnes said. Though, it'll need some repair beforehand since it cracked during transport.

The tusk is just part of a bigger story. For instance, the layers of sediment around it give Starnes some clues about how the fossil got to the creek bank in the first place.

"We do know by studying the geology around it exactly what happened," he said. "It tells us a really, really detailed story."

He said the mammoth probably came to the creek and died before its carcass was washed away and buried, with the tusk detached.

It's not uncommon for tusks to separate from the rest of a mammoth skeleton. Even with well-preserved, frozen specimens, the tusks tend to fall off as they thaw, Starnes said.

Perhaps another lucky fossil hunter will come across the rest of the skeleton one day. "Chances are somewhere in that alluvium of that stream, the rest of it's in there, probably not nearby," Starnes said.

Templeton has been fossil hunting for decades and has adopted a few tips along the way. Templeton's first tip is to just be aware of the types of fossils that you're likely to find in your area. Many of his finds come from creeks' gravel beds.

"It's good for people to realize those sorts of things are out there and just be paying attention because anybody could have walked up on it," Templeton said of the tusk. "I didn't do anything special."

Templeton said it's also important to share what you find with experts.

Starnes said he and his colleagues don't get as much time for fieldwork, so they rely on amateur fossil hunters.

"The stuff that is found here is just amazing," Starnes said of the region's fossils. "And like I said, the public is a big part of that. Folks interested in the world around them and collecting fossils is what expands our scientific knowledge."