Dog digs up ancient woolly mammoth tooth in backyard

WHIDBEY ISLAND, Wash. — An energetic dog recently got his teeth on something that's thousands of years old.

Eight-month-old Scout is a typical yellow Lab, but in September, his owner Kirk Lacewell told KOMO, Scout dug a shallow hole in his Langley backyard and made a historic discovery, "I noticed he was carrying something around in his mouth."

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Lacewell thought it was a piece of petrified wood or even a rock, items Scout never had interest in. But the next day, the pup was still carrying around his treasure.

"On the second day it made me think 'This is odd. I wonder what's going on with this. I wonder what's special about that rock?'" said Lacewell.

Lacewell took what he thought was the rock, washed and dried it, and then it looked different. "Part of it looked like bone - it looked like bone that had a covering over it and the covering was partly worn off."

Lacewell sent pictures of the object to experts at the University of Washington's Burke Museum. "All of the paleontologists over there agree it's part of a woolly mammoth tooth." A tooth that scientists say is 13,000 years old.

"They typically preserve more than other parts of the mammoth," said Andrea Godinez.

Quite a few mammoth teeth and some bones have been found on Whidbey Island. The animals were prevalent during the ice age and, turns out, in the Lacewells' backyard.  The fossilized tooth will remain at their home in a place where Scout can no longer get it.

CNN/KOMO