SAN FRANCISCO - A wooly mammoth tooth with its enamel still
intact has been discovered during the excavation for a new
transit center in downtown San Francisco. A crane operator came
across the 10-inch-long brown, black and beige tooth on Monday
while digging a 200-foot hole for a piling at the Transbay
Transit Center. Woolly mammoths, elephant-like animals, roamed
the San Francisco Bay area some 10 million to 15 million years
ago in the Pleistocene era. The tooth is broken in two and
missing a chunk, but is otherwise in relatively good condition.
"It's a significant find," Jim Allen, a paleontologist and
geologist for the transit center project, told the San Francisco
Chronicle. Other wooly mammoth fossils have been found in the
Bay area, including in San Francisco, but Allen said the
discovery right in the middle of downtown San Francisco as well
as the tooth's surprisingly good condition are unusual. The
tooth is from the same era as fossils found in the La Brea Tar
Pits in the Miracle Mile area of Los Ang