How do you tell Pleistocene mammoth, mastodon, & gomphothere molars apart? All three occur in Pleistocene deposits in South Carolina and throughout the southeastern USA but are frequently confused with one another. Here's a #fossilexplainer comic from Dr. Boessenecker to help! Mammoth (Mammuthus) teeth are perhaps the easiest to distinguish as they have many plates of enamel that are flattened from front to back - typically 15-30 plates or so; these plates are thin, perhaps 1 cm thick, and the enamel itself is also thin - usually about 2-3 mm.

Juvenile fossils can be challenging to identify and are frequently ignored - but our scientists relish such a challenge, and reported the first growth series ever for a toothed baleen whale! New specimens of Coronodon havensteini showcase skull changes through growth. The two juvenile specimens shown here surprisingly have snouts and palates that are the same proportion as the adult - normally, the snout starts off shorter and lengthens during growth in cetaceans. This suggests that feeding behavior constrained its shape.

#Juneteenth
Sharing a post we made last June.
How might racial injustice have anything to do with something as seemingly innocuous as paleontology? The study of fossils from the Charleston area began within 50 years of its founding as a plantation economy-based British colony. 🧵 Shortly after plantations were constructed, enslaved Africans began finding unusual items in the earth.
The first correctly identified vertebrate fossils from North America were dug up on the "Stono Plantation".

What, if anything, does paleontology have to do with racial injustice? The 1st identified vertebrate fossils from North America, mammoth teeth - were identified as elephant teeth by enslaved Africans on the Stono Plantation in 1725. These fossils led to hypothesis of extinction. Many other fossils were excavated by unnamed people, likely slaves, on plantations - like the original fossil of the archaeocete whale Dorudon serratus, found on the Mazyck Plantation in the 1840s.