Mother, son find wooly mammoth tusks in same western Alaska river location 22 years apart
Digital Reporter
Thursday, August 14, 2014, 12:31 PM -
An Alaska man has discovered a wooly mammoth tusk -- 22 years after his mother found one in the same location.
The Alaska Dispatch News reports Andrew Harrelson, who grew up in White Mountain, found the tusk in a bend of the nearby Fish River.
Harrelson says he has a dim memory of his mother's discovery when he was 3-years old.
Harrelson now works in Nome but was in White Mountain over the weekend. After fishing for salmon, he decided to look for fossils, and spotted the 3.6-meter-long tusk.
Tusks of the extinct wooly mammoth are 12,000 to 400,000 years old.
Harrelson says he spotted the base of the mammoth tusk under a stump. White Mountain is a village of 200 about 101 km east of Nome.
For more information on the discovery, visit the Alaska Dispatch News website.
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With files from the Alaska Dispatch News and The Associated Press
