Argentinian museum unearths South America’s longest mastodon tusk
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Paleontologists working in San Pedro, Argentina, a town known for its Pleistocene-era fossils, discovered a 2.34-meter-long mastodon tusk, the longest ever found in South America.
The team from the local Paleontological Museum unearthed the tusk at the El Silencio estate, in a layer of sediment dating back approximately 500,000 years. The discovery surpasses a tusk measuring 2.05 meters that Florentino Ameghino found in 1876.
José Luis Aguilar, director of the museum, explained that the tusk is an exceptional specimen within the South American record of proboscideans, the group that includes mastodons and elephants. The Notiomastodon platensis species is well-documented in South America, but no previously discovered tusk from this species approached this length. A prior tusk found in San Pedro in 2006 measured 2.26 meters, but this new find exceeded it.
Museum officials are displaying the tusk for public viewing, adding it to their collection of significant paleontological artifacts from the region. The find alters the known range of tusk sizes for the Notiomastodon genus in South America.
