Front Yard Surprise
Posted by: Loren Coleman on October 4th, 2008
This photo released by Lamar University shows Jim Westgate, a trained paleontologist and a research associate with the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory at the University of Texas Memorial Museum, posing in Beaumont,Texas, Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008, with a fossil tooth of a mammoth that he found in Caplen, Texas, in the debris from Hurricane Ike. Westgate believes the fossil discovered in the Ike-damaged debris is from a Columbian mammoth. (AP Photo/Lamar University, Brian Sattler)
Dorothy Sisk and Jim Westgate discovered the fossil tooth in the front yard of Sisk’s home in Caplen, Texas, on the devastated Bolivar Peninsula. If the fossil is from a Columbian mammoth, then it is evidence of the species which was common in North America until around 10,000 years ago. It is expected to be sent to the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin.
More than 1 million people fled the Texas coast because of Hurricane Ike, according to the Associated Press.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Law of serendipity, anyone???
Somebody in Great Beyond likes Westgate. Either that, or the Great Beyond ewanted this found for a reason. Cool find.
Lyall Watson gave some good examples like this in The Nature of Things: The Secret Life of Inanimate Objects. Like the visiting ichthyologist in Manchester ( I think) who had a large fish fall at his feet from the sky.
It’s full of stuff like this; give it a read.
I am not surprised that the tooth fossil was found. Fossils are found after every storm by normal beachcombers. With the massive storm erosion from Ike I would think a lot more would be found if it was safe for non-homeowners were allowed to walk along the beaches. Recovery personnel are still looking for humans killed by the storm and washed away or into someone’s frontyard debris piles. 70 confirmed dead with a couple of hundred still missing and believed dead.