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 Background The first mastodon fossil found in Nova Scotia was a
femur (thigh bone) discovered in Lower Middle River, Victoria County, Cape Breton island,
circa 1833. This specimen has been on display since 1835; compare the mastodon thigh bone
with the human leg of Museum geologist Bob Grantham in this mid 1980's photo. You can
still see this bone at the Museum of Natural History in Halifax.The next mastodon report is a molar tooth, found in 1895 at Baddeck, Victoria County. Several more recent mastodon discoveries have been made. A molar tooth was dredged up on George's Bank by a scallop dragger, captained by Vernon D'Eon of Middle West Pubnico, and reported in the Halifax Herald newspaper of January 1965. Subsequent to this, in the fall of 1973, a molar was discovered the the glacial gravel being dumped on site of a new student union building at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The gravels had come from James River, near Antigonish. This molar is the the St. Francis Xavier University Geology Department collection. In October 1989, a complete tusk, a partial second tusk and some small bone fragments were discovered during removal of the overburden at the Fundy Gypsum quarry near Windsor. There have been various other reports of mastodon finds in Nova Scotia, but no others
have been verified or documented so far. All the specimens described above are in the Nova
Scotia Museum Vertebrate Paleontology Collection, except the Antigonish tooth.
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![[Nova Scotia Museum]](../../graphics/nsmlogo.gif){kind=small}