A 3-year-old girl found the remains of a perhistorical elephant on a Buenos Aires beach

[Inkriql]

A 3-year-old girl found the remains of a prehistoric elephant among rocks and snails on a beach in Mar Chiquita.

The girl Indira Guzmán Bravo walked with her family on the beaches of Camet Norte, when suddenly she found something different between snails and stones: a molar of one of the species most admired by paleontologists, the South American Mastodon (Notiomastodon platensis) .

This species inhabited South America for the last million years and it became extinct only 10,000 years ago along with other large mammals that inhabited the area.

The reason why the girl discovered this fossil was due to the erosion in the land that progressively was discovering the paleontological samples on the cliffs.

This South American mastodon was the largest terrestrial mammal that existed in the prehistoric Pampean region, weighing 7.5 tons and approximately 2.5 meters high at the level of the haunches.

The molars of Notiomastodon have two rows of bulbous cusps that, when worn, take the shape of a clover.

Indira with 3 years could deduce that it was something different from everything that was lying on that beach.

She and her family decided, after a while, to bring the fossil to the Municipal Museum of Natural Sciences of Mar del Plata "Lorenzo Scaglia" where it was temporarily deposited in her collection.

"The fossil is not the one who finds it, but belongs to everyone, and so that it belongs to everyone must be in a museum", says the National Law for the Protection of the Archaeological and Paleontological Heritage 25.743.

This story shows how the little Indira of 3 years understood perfectly that it is a piece with patrimonial, natural and cultural value.