Tip of mammoth tusk unearthed in Canada

A Canadian museum curator says he plans to look for additional pieces of an ancient mammoth tusk found in the Saanich Peninsula.

Grant Keddie, curator of archaeology at the Royal B.C. Museum in British Columbia, spotted the tip of the tusk among cliff erosion debris at Island View Beach.

I looked up on the cliff and it sort of looked like something that could be bone and I climbed up there and sure enough it was a piece of tusk, Keddie told the Victoria Times Colonist. These mammoth bones are falling out of the cliff.

The Saanich Peninsula was home to the mammoth during the ice age. Bones of the ancient elephants crop up in eroded areas from time to time, the Colonist said Monday.

Keddie said the tusk fragment was about the length of a forearm and he said he expects the rest of the sample is buried in the area somewhere.