Cooper High senior finds a rare fossil on a ranch near Brownwood

BROWNWOOD, Texas (KTAB/KRBC) – Did mammoths once roam the Big Country? A senior from Cooper High seems to think so!

Jaxon Craig, 19, spends many weekends just south of Brownwood searching for deer antlers and cow skulls on his grandparents’ ranch. He cleans and paints them, transforming what would be the end of the animal, and bringing it back to life.

Last Easter weekend, Craig found something under a small mesquite tree he had never seen before. Anxious not to get stuck by a prickly pear thorn, he bent down and picked up what he described as a “fossilized cow patty”.

An oblong object with a stiff texture on all sides and a flat base with a darker circle in the middle. Confused, Craig picked up the oddly shaped rock and carried it home.

“I thought it was prehistoric roly-poly with the ridges on top,” Craig said.

As he sat down and looked at it more carefully, Craig said he thought he had found some kind of fossil. Not knowing exactly what it was, he brought it to school for his science teacher to examine.

His science teacher babysat him over the weekend and determined that Craig had found a juvenile Columbian mammoth tooth.

GALLERY: Discover the fossilized tooth in 360 view

Columbian mammoths are distant cousins ​​of the better known woolly mammoth. However, Columbian mammoths are better suited to southern heat, not covered in long, dense layers of hair.

Columbian mammoths grew to nearly 13 feet at the shoulder, weighing nearly 10 tons, and having tusks reaching nearly 14 feet in length. They are considered to be one of the largest species of mammoths to walk the land.

Jaxon Craig requested further verification, sent the tooth to Baylor University, where their paleontologists also checked the Columbian mammoth tooth. However, they added a unique piece of information.

Craig said paleontologists described the juvenile tooth as a premolar, meaning the young mammoth was still growing on that tooth. He said while researching the animal, mammoths have lost their teeth six times in their lifetime, but this particular tooth was not lost naturally, making it much rarer.

This means that when the animal finally died, the tooth was still growing and attached to the mammoth, increasing the chances that the remains of the mammoth’s skeleton could be found on its grandparents’ property.

As he is about to graduate on Memorial Day weekend, Craig said that after graduation he will be looking for the remains of the mammoth skeleton, a one-time summer project for a 19 year old.

“I’ll probably just watch for myself,” Craig said. “I marked it to know roughly where it is.”

If he is unlucky with his excavation project, he said he would contact local museums and colleges to see if they are interested in helping find the animal’s remains.

“As much as I would love to find it for myself,” Craig began humbly, “I would hate if an entire juvenile mammoth skeleton was never found or ever used for educational purposes.”

Craig said that before he found the mammoth tooth, he knew nothing about the Columbian mammoths in the Big Country. Now he said he wants to help educate others who are interested in prehistoric beasts, which is why he would like to try to get the complete skeleton to a museum if it is found.

As he digs, Craig said he was debating whether to donate the tooth to a museum or keep it for himself.

“Part of me wants to keep it because I found it on my ranch. It’s so cool and has a lot of sentimental value to me,” Craig explained. “But again, it’s not going to do as much. to sit in my room watching, when it could be in a museum teaching other people and they would get more use out of it than me.”

Prior to Craig’s discovery, employees of the town of Bangs discovered fossils of Columbian mammoths in 2005as well.