Fossil Hunt Yields Rare Dinosaur Tooth

What began as a dig for prehistoric marine fossils in a Mississippi creek has turned up an unexpected discovery. In late July George Phillips, the Paleontology Curator for the Mississippi Museum of Natural History, was in New Albany, wading through a creek bed when he found the tooth of a species that walked the earth long before humans did. “There on the top of the gravel bar, right in the center of the bar, lying at the tippy-top for the world to see, there lay that tooth, Phillips recalled. “I knew right away, just within a couple of twists and turns of the surface of the crown, that I was dealing with a dinosaur tooth.” The tooth belonged to a type of Ceratopsian, or horned dinosaur. It’s now one of two horned dinosaur fossils to be found in the Southeast United States. The other was a lower jaw bone found earlier this year in North Carolina.