Mass. fishermen pulled in an ancient woolly mammoth molar — and are auctioning it for Ukraine

It’s difficult to fathom sometimes how old the Earth is. Then a piece of its ancient past shows up to remind us.

That’s what happened when a crew of fishermen, dredging for scallops off Newburyport, found something large, brown, and rigid among the typically water-warped scallop shells.

“I looked back and saw what looked like some kind of arthropod stuffed into the pile,” Asher Molyneaux, captain of the Finlander II, a scallop boat, told National Fisherman. “I went back and grabbed it, and said, ‘That’s a mammoth tooth.’ I don’t know how I knew that, I must have seen a picture somewhere.”

The tooth dates back many millenia, according UNH paleontologist William Clyde, who told National Fisherman it’s probably between 10,000 and 15,000 years old. Woolly mammoths roamed the earth until about 4,000 years ago, the publication said.

The tooth weighs about seven pounds and measures about 11 inches long, according to NBC 10 Boston.

Currently, the tooth is on display at Captain Time Rider’s restaurant in Kittery, Maine. But soon it could be headed to a new home.

The fishermen decided to auction the tooth on eBay with all proceeds headed to World Central Kitchen, which is providing meals to Ukrainian families fleeing the Russian invasion.

As of Thursday afternoon, bidding on the tooth was up to $4,800 with the auction closing on Sunday just after noon.

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