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Full Version: Pretty Good Find in the Uintas
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I found 2 fully intact pieces of a elk skeleton. Ones the skull and the other is the jaw/mouth.
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It is hard to tell from the pics, did you find the ivory?
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It's kind of dumb but I don't know which teeth that is and it doesn't appear to be missing any. I watched a youtube video and was easy to tell what ones were the ivory with the guy explaining it, but with mine the teeth look the same everywhere. It's actually a pretty small elk so i'm not sure if it was to young to have those teeth. Here's a upside down picture...not sure if that will help or not.
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The ivory really aren't teeth and would be forward in the mouth, between the front teeth, that are used to cut the grass and different brouse they eat and the back teeth that they use to chew that food. See how those back teeth look warn down? Well the ivory would not be warn at all because they use it to talk to each other with chirps and low pitch noise that the ivory help create. All elk have ivory no matter what their size. Try taking a pic like the last one(upside down) but this time get the front teeth in the pic as well.
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After looking at your first pics, it appears that part is missing, the ivory would be in the section I circled in the pic below.
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Oh bummer, it is missing. Right where you circled has 2 holes and nothings in them. Do you think that means some hunter could have just shot it, took the ivory and left it there? Or else why would it be missing? I know the decomposition process is very complicated with animals eating it and weathering but I found it very odd that I only found those 2 bones. There wasn't even any broken bone fragments besides these. It was in the back of the woods kind of hidden, not to far from where some people camped. Still though, I'm surprised someone else didn't take or find it before me.
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Is the head all you found? If so, it is possible that it was shot a year or more ago, during hunting season. By law you don't need to keep the head after killing an animal, so it is not uncommon to leave the head but take the ivory.
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Yeah I only found those 2 pieces. The skull and the jaw. They were placed about 5 feet apart and there wasn't anything else.
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