A Mammoth Find: Whole Tusks Unearthed Pipeline Excavation Leads Paleontologist To Old Bones

A paleontologist who found a massive jawbone and two tusks isn’t sure if they belonged to an ancient mammoth or a mastodon.

But he is certain of one thing. It’s a fairly mammoth discovery.

David Taylor, an adjunct professor at Portland State University, investigated the remnants Friday in a field in Turner, south of Salem.

Northwest Pipeline Corp. had called him to a ditch they were digging on the private property when they saw something unusual.

“I was walking along the trench and saw little pieces of white strung out along the bottom,” Taylor said. “I knew immediately it was ivory.”

Parts of a tusk had been sliced in half by the pipeline excavation, he said.

Taylor, who is also director of Portland’s Northwest Museum of Natural History Association, said the jawbone looks like it may have belonged to a Columbian mammoth. But he’s still not certain.

Mammoths and mastodons were common in the Pacific Northwest during the Pleistocene epoch, which ended 11,500 years ago. Mammoths were elephant-like creatures with hairy skin and long tusks curving upward. Mastodons were a larger version of much the same thing.

This isn’t the first time Taylor has unearthed these type of remnants. He found his first mammoth when he was a seventh grader living in Southwest Portland.

Nevertheless, Gregory J. Ratallack, professor of geological sciences at the University of Oregon, said the current discovery is significant. The university’s Condon collection has about 50 pieces of mastodons and mammoths. But whole tusks and jawbones, Ratallack said, are unusual - especially in this part of the country.

Turner thinks the remnants found in Turner are 12,000 to 15,000 years old. Although the bones have not been scientifically dated, he found them among silts that were deposited by floods at the end of the last Ice Age.

These sorts of bones also can point to human activity.

An excavation near Coburg, for example, unearthed a partial mammoth skeleton. And that led scientists to a number of simple implements fashioned by humans.

Taylor said that could be the oldest evidence of human activity in the area.