6-year-old boy picks up Mastodon molar while hiking
ANN ARBOR, MI - Like many 6-year-olds, Julian Gagnon likes to pick things up off the ground. Sticks, rocks, you name it. Earlier this month, he made his most important discovery yet. Important enough to garner the attention of University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology. Julian found an ancient mastodon tooth during a Sept. 6 hike with his family at Dinosaur Hill Nature Preserve in Rochester Hills. UM museum scientists verified its authenticity, and Julian will donate it to the museum to ensure its preservation.
Julian is probably the first person to touch the tooth in 12,000 years, said Adam Rountrey, the paleontology museum’s research museum collection manager. “He was also very, very specifically concerned that he wanted to make sure he was credited as the discoverer of the mastodon tooth,” Julian’s mother said, with a chuckle. “That was very important to him that I relate that to the paleontologists.”
Rountrey and his fellow paleontologists verified the authenticity of the tooth Julian found through several factors, including its size, Rountrey said. “It’s crown is about the size of my fist, so maybe between baseball and softball size,” he said. “There aren’t really too many options for what animal that could come from in Michigan. We had mammoths and mastodons here at the same time, but mammoth teeth are very distinctive and different” from what Julian found. He also noted “tall bumps” on the crowns that form “little sort of mountains on the tooth” that are distinctively from a mastodon.
As a reward for his discovery, Julian will meet with the paleontologists sometime in October for a behind-the-scenes tour at the university’s Ann Arbor Research Museums Center. The fact that his discovery is part of the exhibit is exciting for Julian, “as you can imagine,” Mary Gagnon said. “This has only fueled his passion for archaeology and paleontology,” she said. “As far as he’s concerned, this is his first discovery of his career, and now it’s hard to dissuade him from picking anything up that he sees.”
https://www.pennlive.com/nation-world/2021/09/wow-i-found-a-dragons-tooth-6-year-old-boy-picks-up-mastodon-molar-while-hiking.html
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Fossil Plant Material in Road Cuts near Pittsburgh and Ambridge, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvanian Coal Forest
~ 299 - 300 Million Years Old
https://www.fossilguy.com/sites/ambridge/fern-fossils.htm