Boy donates discovered mammoth tooth to Tumbler Ridge Museum

TUMBLER RIDGE, B.C. — A boy’s discovery of a mammoth tooth has been donated to the Tumbler Ridge Museum, who will feature it in their Dinosaur Discovery Gallery.

In 2013, seven-year-old Wyatt Werner was out on a picnic with his family in the Peace Region. He was looking at rocks in a creek-bed, and found one that looked different from the other ones. He showed it to his mother and grandfather, and eventually, it was taken home with them.

It wasn’t until later that it was identified as a molar tooth of an immature mammoth by the paleontologists of the Peace Region Paleontology Research Centre in Tumbler Ridge.

The tooth — about the size of an adult’s fist — has a complete crown and root system. A piece of the tooth will be carbon-dated – depending on the result, experts say it is not likely this mammoth was seen by early human inhabitants of our region.

The tooth was donated to the PRPRC, where it will be exhibited with the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation’s Dinosaur Discovery Gallery. But not before Wyatt got his own exact replica of the tooth to keep. A 3D digital model will be available on the PRPRC website.

Wyatt will also be a part of the institution’s recorded collections. His discovery and contribution to the Tumbler Ridge Museum Foundation isn’t the first to be made by children and young adults.

The Museum Foundation says some of the most impressive finds in the past decade and a half have been by kids. They believe it might be due to their being closer to the ground, their innate curiosity, and perhaps to a child’s ability to discern interesting shapes better than adults.

Richard McCrea, Curator of Palaeontology at the PRPRC, called Wyatt’s contribution an ‘important addition’ to their collections.

“It adds to the small, but growing number of fossil vertebrate specimens known from the Pleistocene of the Peace Region,” he said.

“There are many questions about our region during this time period, including the timing and extent of glaciation, the presence of ice-free corridors and refugia, the composition of the flora and fauna throughout this glacial period and the presence or absence of humans.”

The Museum Foundation says this region is steadily fulfilling its potential as a treasure-chest of ice-age fossils, and Wyatt Werner’s discovery is ‘an important part of the picture that is emerging.’

In 2015 a 22,000 year old mammoth tusk from the region was donated to the PRPRC. Other pre-historic discoveries in the past include a 12,400 year old bison skull that was sent back to Tumbler Ridge from Simon Fraser University.