**First Time At Auction**

New World, present day Alaska, or Central Asia, Siberia, Pleistocene (Ice Age), ca. 100,000 to 20,000 years old. A large, fossilized tooth from the prehistoric woolly mammoth! This tooth is a lengthy molar with prominent horizontal ridges for grinding up vegetation. The original chemicals of the tooth were replaced during the fossilization process with quartz (silica) and other minerals that have developed lovely hues of beige, white, blue-gray, and deep black. The rounded and smooth edges of the crowns are pleasingly tactile. The bones, teeth, and even fur of these massive herbivores have been preserved by the icy climate in which these mammoths once thrived and give us a fascinating glimpse of their existence. Size: 11.5" L x 3.5" W x 3" H (29.2 cm x 8.9 cm x 7.6 cm)

While mammoths survived until ca. 5600 years ago on remote Alaskan islands, those animals had begun to shrink in size as the climate warmed from the end of the Ice Age ca. 10,000 years ago. The name mammoth comes from a Siberian word used to describe the tusks found there by native people, like the Khanty of the Irtysh River basin, and traded to Europe and China. Their occasional finds of massive tusks and even preserved mammoth bodies in the permafrost - often eroding out of the sides of riverbanks - led to their folkloric belief that mammoths were like huge rodents, dwelling underground, dying when they accidentally surfaced. With the invention of science as a discipline, massive fossils like this one continued to capture imaginations all over the world. For example, Thomas Jefferson, who was fascinated by paleontology, is credited with introducing the use of the word mammoth as an adjective to describe something very large.

Provenance: ex-Stein collection, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, USA, acquired prior to 2010

All items legal to buy/sell under U.S. Statute covering cultural patrimony Code 2600, CHAPTER 14, and are guaranteed to be as described or your money back.

A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids.

We ship worldwide to most countries and handle all shipping in-house for your convenience.

#164329

Stable fissures from fossilization process. Chips and losses to underside of tooth. Felt pads added to underside for stabilization.