Woolly mammoth tooth discovered in southern Romania

An upper incisor belonging to a woolly mammoth has been discovered in a ravine in the commune of Săpoca, Buzău County, in southern Romania.

The incisor has entered the national cultural heritage administered by the Buzău County Museum, which dated it to the late Pleistocene period.

“It is an incisor, an ivory tusk from a woolly mammoth specimen, and it is currently the largest paleofauna piece in our institution’s collection. [...] Given its size, we will need to create a special display unit for its exhibition. It measures 120 cm in length. Such pieces are extremely rare in southern and southeastern Romania. We thank the mayor of Săpoca for providing the necessary support in recovering the piece, which was found in a ravine by a local resident,” stated Daniel Costache, director of the Buzău County Museum, cited by Agerpres.

Woolly mammoths were at the peak of their species in the Late Pleistocene.

“Human populations were already present in Europe in this period. Neanderthals existed until about 40,000 years ago, after which modern humans, Homo sapiens, arrived and spread. In Romania, there is evidence of interactions between humans and mammoths, both for food and for crafting various objects from ivory bones,” explained Dr. Ștefan Vasile, a lecturer at the Faculty of Geology and Geophysics, University of Bucharest.

According to experts, the discovery in Buzău is significant because very few such pieces have been found in southern Romania.

At only 3 meters in height, the woolly mammoth was one of the smaller mammoth species, as it lived in a colder climate, where a larger body surface would have resulted in greater heat loss. The mammoths likely lived between 125,000 and 11,000 years ago.

The ivory discovered in Săpoca could provide insights into the climate and environment in which this mammoth lived.

“When we find traces of animal species, we can also infer the surrounding environment and the conditions they lived in. Over the last 2.6 million years, several glaciations and warmer intervals have alternated. [...] The woolly mammoth had a characteristic type of vegetation; it lived in what is known as the 'mammoth steppe,' which had few trees or shrubs but significant snow coverage - a climate that allowed both mammoths and humans to survive,” Ștefan Vasile added.

(Photo source: Muzeul Județean Buzău