Mastodon tooth found in donation box

For the 40 years we had to take beach walks together my mother would, on every single walk, stop to unearth something from the sand with her big toe and be disappointed when it was another shell, dead crab or pull tab (remember pull tabs?).

"One day I'm going to find a Spanish doubloon," she would say, and then she'd be rich and we would run away, or just buy a beach house and look for doubloons every day.

Dreams of finding treasure in ordinary places fill the heads of everyone in the mundane world, especially by those of us who watch shows like Auction Kings or Antiques Roadshow and who are avid thrift store hunters. Sometimes you hear of treasures found in garage sales that belong in art museums. Seldom, though do you hear of a find that belongs in a science museum, but that's just what happened when the tooth and possibly part of a tusk of a Mastodon turned up in a charity donation box in Michigan. Here's my story on the subject on National Geographic: Mastodon Tooth Turns Up In Church Charity Items.

Happy hunting!