PORT TOWNSEND — A fossilized tusk has been discovered by visitors at Fort Worden State Park.
“The tusk was found to be eroding out of the sandstone bluff on the beach there at Fort Worden,” said Andrea Thorpe, State Parks’ natural resources program manager. “I believe it was in early March. Visitors notified our park staff, which was great.”
The focus now is on developing a preservation plan and maintaining public safety, Thorpe said.
“It is really cool to have that in our park,” she said. “We really want to make sure that we can preserve the fossil. Get it into a place where people can see it better than where it’s currently located and preserve the natural history of the park.”
When asked if the tusk was known to be a mastodon tusk or a mammoth tusk, Thorpe said scientists from the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture haven’t been able to tell.
“Apparently there’s other species of similar animals that lived back then that had similar tusks. It could be one of those as well,” Thorpe said.
‘Few feet long’
The full size of the tusk is unknown as some of it has already eroded away, Thorpe said.
“What’s intact appears to be a few feet long,” she said.
Thorpe said the situation is evolving.
“It’s in a difficult place for us to access,” she said. “We are doing what we can to preserve the fossil while we work with paleontologists from the Burke Museum of Natural History to try to make sure that we can preserve it and bring it into collection eventually.”
With no timeline set as of Friday, Thorpe said the park and the Burke museum are trying to balance weather, schedules and other obligations.
Some preservation measures already have been taken in an effort to buy time while parks and paleontologists work on a plan to extract the fossil, Thorpe said.
“Scientists from the Burke applied a plaster cast over the fossil,” Thorpe said. “You actually can’t see the fossil itself, because it’s covered up with that cast. That both holds it in place, as well as protects it from the elements.”
Where the tusk might reside or how it might be displayed once the extraction and preservation have occurred has yet to be determined, Thorpe said.
“We have our own collections area in state parks,” Thorpe said. “Once the specimens are preserved so that they won’t fall apart and won’t get damaged from movement, we often have those specimens for view, within different areas within parks. We haven’t figured out where the ultimate placement of the tusk will be.”
Park staff request that members of the public interested in seeing the site do so respectfully by staying on the beach, observing the fencing and the signage, Thorpe said.
“It’s both a really sensitive resource as well as a difficult area,” Thorpe said. “It is on an eroding bluff face. It’s really not safe for people to try to climb on that bluff.”
Thorpe said it appears that some visitors already have tried to get to the tusk.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
