Where there’s one, you’ll find the other. A second mammoth tusk has been uncovered at the site of the new Thomas Jefferson School of Law.
Construction crews in the East Village stumbled upon the mammoth bones, believed to be 500,000 years old, at 11th and Island Avenues.
A paleontologist from the San Diego Museum of Natural History was called to determine the age of the bones. The eight-foot-long tusk and skull were buried close to 20 feet below ground, according to the school's spokesman Chris Saunders.
The second tusk, which is believed to be part of the same animal, is approximately the same size - more than 10 feet long. It was found slightly uphill at a lesser depth than the original find, which was about 20 feet below street level.
The skull is the first intact mammoth skull ever to be found in San Diego County, according to paleontologist Pat Sena.
Several species of mammoths lived in Southern California during the Pleistocene Epoch, 1.6 million to 10,000 years ago, according to the San Diego Natural History Museum's Web site. The Columbian mammoth was 12 feet tall and weighed as much as 10 tons.
Rain could delay the process of removing the bones. The construction is halted by about three weeks. It's slated to be completed by the 2010-2011 school year.
