During the week of August 20th, heavy rains washed the bones of a mastodon from the bank of a creek north of Stephenville. Some of the bones were brought to the office of the Stephenville Empire where someone identified them as Mammut americanum. The mastodon, a browser rather than a grazer like the more common mammoth, had been in the area for three million years, until the Pleistocene ended around 12,800 years ago. The mastodon’s head was carried horizontally to scoop up vegetation with the tusks. When both tusks are found one of them shows more wear showing that they were right or left tusked.

Bjorn Kurten and Elaine Anderson. Pleistocene Mammals of North America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980