This is a mammoth tooth that was collected from a lake in Bering Land Bridge National Preserve. The tooth was found about 50 m from a cluster of mammoth bones, including a nicely preserved humerus and ulna from the left side of the animal. Due to the proximity of these fossils, they may belong to a single specimen; representing a partially completely mammoth skeleton. The small circular hole seen directly adjacent to the sample number is where bone collagen was sampled for radiocarbon dating. The mammoth tooth dates to 12,330 +/- 50 radiocarbon years before present, or 14,530 to 14,060 calendar years before present. This means that the mammoth lived during the end of the Pleistocene epoch (2.6-0.01 million years ago), a time when much of the world was covered by glaciers, but western Alaska and Siberia were connected by an ice-free steppe called Beringia. Longest axis of the tooth is approxmiately 22 cm.
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