A man found a strange stone on the beach (3 photos)
Traveler Kyle Finley, who loves evening walks along Edisto Beach (South Carolina, USA), found a fossilized tooth of an American prehistoric mastodon. 
"I was just walking along the coastline, watching the sun set, and wasn't looking for anything. At one point I happened to look down and saw six spikes sticking out of the sand. I immediately thought it looked like a mastodon tooth. I was shocked “I couldn’t believe that I would find an artifact in such good condition. Of course, such a find happens only once in a lifetime,” said Kyle Finley.
The man admitted that he and his family have been vacationing on Edisto Beach since childhood. Finding fossils was one of his favorite pastimes, but this still came as a complete surprise to him.
A representative of the Natural History Museum in London (UK) examined the photographs of Kyle Finley and confirmed that they depict the tooth of an American mastodon, or Mammut americanum. 
By the way, the American mastodon is a distant relative of mammoths and elephants. This animal lived in North America from the late Miocene to the late Pleistocene, but went extinct about 10,000 years ago. Representatives of the species were slightly shorter and stronger than mammoths: females reached about 7 feet (about 2 m) in height, and males - up to 10 feet (10 m).
In fact, unique fossils are often found at Edisto Beach in South Carolina. Vacationers have previously encountered the teeth of an extinct megalodon, as well as the remains of other prehistoric mammals.
“I’ve only seen this in books and museums. Perhaps I’ll take this tooth to a museum or university to get more information on how to properly store and preserve it,” Finley added. 
