This tusk is in the collection of a friend of mine Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! That's my arm for scale. Detail: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's from a female woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). Female woolly mammoths had only rudimentary tusks compared to the giant tusks of the males. It was found on the Taymyr peninsula, the northernmost area of Siberia. It's not carbon dated yet, but it could be late Pleistocene since it's not mineralized and other 'in situ' finds are also late Pleistocene (Younger Dryas even). Has anybody any idea what caused the curious wear pattern, not seen in other fossil tusks?
Here is a paleonthological sound reconstruction by Adrie and Alphonse Kennis (twin brothers and highly skilled artists) of how a woolly mammoth female (cow, but that sounds wrong) would have looked like. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Notice that the sudden wear starts at the area where the tusk was in the socket (alveolus). It's anybodies guess, what could have caused this damage, paleontologist or not. Maybe a chemist?
