Mastodon Remains Discovered in Carlsbad

By Ed Joyce / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published June 14, 2007 at 11:35 AM PDT

This story was published more than 16 years ago.

Imagine back more than 100,000 years for a moment, when dinosaurs roamed Southern California. That's just where local scientists were taken in Carlsbad when they gazed at pre-historic fossils of a Mas

Mastodon Remains Discovered in Carlsbad

(Photo, Right: Palentologists from the San Diego Natural History Museum carefully remove skeletal remains of a prehistoric mastodon, believed to have lived during the Ice Age. Jan Percival, Scribe Communications .)

Imagine back more than 100,000 years for a moment, when dinosaurs roamed Southern California. That's just where local scientists were taken in Carlsbad when they gazed at pre-historic fossils of a mastodon at a construction site. KPBS Reporter Ed Joyce has details.

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A Paleontologist holds the upper jaw fossil of the prehistoric mastodon discovered in Carlsbad. (Photo: Jan Percival, Scribe Communications.) .

Officials say it's the first mastodon found in Carlsbad. The mastodon is a distant cousin of the elephant. Remains were discovered Tuesday at a new home construction site. Tom Demere is the paleontologist with the San Diego Natural History Museum.

Demere: We're the first people to ever see this specimen. And it hasn't seen the light of day for at least 100,000 years. It kind of confirms our ideas about the ancient environments here in the coastal plain of Southern California.

He says two complete tusks, an upper jaw fragment with three teeth, and vertebrae from one mastodon were found. Demere says previous mastodon fossils found in National City and Oceanside were not as complete. He says analyzing the ice age remains could tell us more about climate change patterns. Ed Joyce, KPBS News.

Ed Joyce

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Ed Joyce was the environment reporter and afternoon news anchor for KPBS-FM. Before joining KPBS, he worked as an editor/columnist with Copley News Service in San Diego. Ed has an extensive background in newspaper, radio, web and TV journalism. After graduating with a B.A. in Communications from the University of Washington in Seattle, Ed began a career in broadcast journalism. His work has included stints in public broadcasting, commercial broadcasting and education -- working as an affiliate professor of communication and reporter at the University of Idaho and Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. During the past 20 years he has worked in radio, TV and print as a news reporter, anchor, writer, editor and producer. Along the way he has won numerous awards for general news reporting, newswriting, feature and issue reporting and breaking news reporting from The Associated Press, The Society of Professional Journalists, San Diego Press Club and other organizations. During the mid-1990s, while working for Oregon Public Broadcasting, he was a frequent contributor to National Public Radio, including a feature report on the memorial service for 14 U.S. Forest Service "hotshots" who died fighting a wildfire in Colorado (the crew was based in a central Oregon town). He’s also filed reports with Marketplace, KQED’s California Report and Climate Watch and with national and regional networks throughout the United States. At KPBS, Ed continues his contributions to National Public Radio and other national and regional news organizations. He has won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and San Diego Press Club for his environmental reporting at KPBS-FM-TV and for producing and anchoring radio newscasts. In 2007 he was selected a National Press Foundation fellow for Understanding Violent Weather II program. The seminars were held at the National Weather Center in Norman, Okla. In 2008 he spoke at a UC San Diego conference on U.S. National Security as part of the school’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation. Ed led a discussion with the 18 foreign government officials and academics about the political debate over climate change. In 2010, Ed was elected to a three-year term on the board of the San Diego Press Club.

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