Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 June 1887 — A Mastodon's Tooth. [ARTICLE]

A Mastodon's Tooth.

Some two or three weeks ago a man walking along the bank of! Gregory & Cooley's big dredge ditch, some twelve miles west of Bose Lawn, in Newton county, found in the ditch the tooth of some immense animal, probably a mastodon The tooth weighed five pounds, was 8 inches long and about 4 inches square at the crown.It was truly an enormous tooth and the surprise and wonder of all who saw it Many other fragments of bone were found in the ditch, near where " the tsoth was found, but they crumbled to pieces at a touch. The depth at which the tooth and bones were found was twelve feetThe place was within the limits of the great marsh called the Black Marsh. It is not unlikely that the animal to which the tooth belonged, got mired in the marsh, ages ago, and so lost its life. Mr. S. E. Nichols, the station agent at Rose Lawn, has seen the tooth and 5 ouches for the accuracy of all the above statements. The owner of the tooth, who values it at SIOO, intends to take it to Chicago and offer it for sale there. The tooth, as above remarked, probably belonged to a mastodon, which, as most of our readers already know, was an animal closely resembling the modern elephant, only larger, ahd which formerly existed on this continent, in large numbers.