Mammoth tooth found at Transbay dig

San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate.com ^ | Updated 10:55 p.m., Wednesday, September 12, 2012 | Michael Cabanatuan

[thecodont]

A seemingly ordinary day at the Transbay Transit Center construction site became a mammoth day of discovery Monday when a mild-mannered crane operator reached deep into the earth and pulled out a tooth.

This was no ordinary tooth. The 10-inch-long brown, black and beige chomper, broken in two and missing a chunk, once belonged to a woolly mammoth, an elephantine creature that roamed the grassy valley that's now San Francisco Bay 10 million to 15 million years ago in the Pleistocene epoch.

Other woolly mammoth fossils have been found in the Bay Area, including in San Francisco about 2 miles away on Columbus Avenue, near Twin Peaks and in Hunters Point, said Jim Allen, a paleontologist and geologist for the project. The tooth, he said, is in remarkable condition with the enamel still intact, and has not deteriorated to the point of most fossils.

"It's a significant find," he said Wednesday. "It's unique to find something right smack in downtown San Francisco."

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Mammoth-tooth-found-at-Transbay-dig-3861381.php#ixzz26KtECoyB

[thecodont]

Picture at the link.

[afraidfortherepublic]

My question: what does the “manner” of the crane operator have to do with this story? Would the find have been any less significant if the crane operator had been gruff and obnoxious?

[jmcenanly]

I suppose that the site will be shut down because of the endangered species/sarc
But then again, this is San Francisco.

[afraidfortherepublic]

Here the pieces of the tooth are shown in relation to a gold nugget found at the dig earlier. Further question: How does displaying the tooth next to a gold nugget provide the reader with a sense of the size of the fossil? Gold nuggets could be any size. A comparison picture should be the tooth placed next to something of a fixed size, such as a penny.

Journalism standards have certainly deteriorated since I was in school. This whole report, while interesting, is written in an odd manner.

[Happy Rain]

OK, I’ll bite...how big was it?

(he who reads headlines only;)

[Right Wing Assault]

how big was it?

It's 3 feet long.

I demand that this project be cancelled due to the historic and prehistoric importance of this site. Further excavation will endanger this important resource.

There. I've saved the state of CA billions of dollars.

[Vaquero]

San Francisco???

was it a Gay Mammouth (does this foliage make my butt look big)

or the Masterbaterdon...whose inability to mate doomed him to extinction

[jayrunner]

I like your sense of humor.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks afraidfortherepublic. Someone sent me a link to a completely different story, about mammoth cloning, that I haven't seen posted yet. Mammoth Told Me There'd Be Days Like This. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[mass55th]

Are they sure it isn’t from San Fran Nan?

[Varda]

“10 million to 15 million years ago in the Pleistocene “

I bet this is a typo and means to say 1.0 to 1.5. 15 million years ago was the Miocene and that would be extremely early for mammoth fossils in N. America.

[Ken H]

Journalism standards have certainly deteriorated since I was in school. This whole report, while interesting, is written in an odd manner.

It's due to his glaucoma medicine...