A mammoth tusk was accidentally unearthed in a 30-foot deep pit during the construction of an apartment complex in South Lake Union, Washington, near Seattle. This may be the largest such artifact ever recovered in the Seattle area.
AMLI Residential, who manages the construction, agreed to allow Burke Museum to remove the tusk from the grounds. The ancient artifact will be displayed at the local, well-renowned museum. Burke Museum is the leading repository for fossils from around the Evergreen State.
"[W]hen our contractor informed us of this find, our first response was to determine how the community could benefit... The excavation will cause us some construction delay but the scientific and educational benefits of this discovery clearly outweigh the costs... This is an exciting discovery for our local Northwest history," Scott Koppelman, senior vice president of AMLI Residential, told Tech Times in an emailed statement.
The tusk likely is that of a Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), and is estimated to be between 16,000 and 60,000 years old. The ancient tusk is nearly nine feet long, and was found 30 feet deep underground. Such artifacts were named the official fossil of Washington state in 1998. The museum currently houses more than two dozen other artifacts from wooly mammoths.
"Since the tusk is on private property, it could have ended up in a private collection. We are very fortunate that AMLI contacted us to remove and care for the tusk. Their decision to do so provides us and the general public with a great opportunity to learn more about mammoths in this area," Christian Sidor, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at Burke Museum, said. Throughout the United States, such finds are declared to be the property of landowners.
"The AMLI Residential team's construction crew has been extremely helpful throughout the removal process," Sidor said. "It has been a pleasure working with them, and we greatly appreciate their enthusiasm in sharing this important prehistoric find with the Seattle community and researchers by bringing it to the Burke Museum for further analysis."
The Burke museum would not comment on a financial value of the find. Even modern tusks, weighing 150 pounds, can sell for $60,000 on the black market. In China, prices can be even higher.
In 1961, the remains of an ancient giant sloth were discovered in a peat bog near Seattle. That artifact is currently displayed at the Burke Museum. Curators hope the new find will be displayed near that specimen.
Mammoths, ancestors of modern elephants, arrived from Asia two million years ago. The species lived in ice-free areas of North America throughout the last ice age. Columbian mammoths stood 12 feet tall at the shoulder, and ate 600 pounds of plants and grasses each day. The better-known woolly mammoth did not live west of the Rocky Mountains. Both species went extinct just over 10,000 years ago.
