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EDITORIAL: 18,000-Year-Old Tusk Fossil a Fun Find for Skagit Man

Posted on: Saturday, 1 April 2006, 12:00 CST

By The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.

Apr. 1--Remember that rock that looked like a fossil you found when you were a child? Maybe it was a fossil.

It happened to Earl Curry while he was working in his Skagit County gravel pit. He ran into something he thought was a petrified tree. Turns out he stumbled upon a tusk from an animal that likely died 18,000 years ago, according to the scientists he has loaned the tusk to at Western Washington University.

Western research technician George Mustoe is now working on the tusk, trying to dry it out in a safe way to preserve the historic find.

Mustoe told Bellingham Herald reporter Katie Johannes that the tusk is likely from an animal that lived 18,000 years ago in what is now Canada and that it was carried to its resting place in Skagit County by a river of glacial melt water. Deposits from advancing and receding glaciers created many of the hills in our area thousands of years ago. The glacial rivers are responsible for a lot of the gravel now buried in our earth.

If you want to see a piece of ancient history, drying pieces of the 18,000-year-old tusk are on display outside Room 208 of the Environmental Studies Building on Western's campus. The building is open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. weekdays.

Not everyone will be as lucky as Curry to come across such an interesting and important find. But it just goes to show that it can happen.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Bellingham Herald, Bellingham, Wash.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Bellingham Herald, Wash.

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