Hobby geologist comes across a rarity in the Teufelsgraben in the foothills of the Alps

Created: 01/14/2023 10:11 am

By: Sabrina Winklmaier

Willibald Braun proudly presents his find on the N6 board of the Holzkirchen geo-teaching trail.

© Norbert Strauss

Holzkirchen – Willi Braun from Roggersdorf, who now lives in Dietramszell, had the right nose in the summer of 2020 with a connoisseur’s eye when looking for special stones.

Near the Teufelsgraben he discovered a mammoth molar.

The fossil is of particular importance because such finds are rare in the foothills of the Alps and unusual directly on the former edge of the glacier.

The mammoth tooth can now be viewed in a preserved state in the foyer of Holzkirchner town hall.

In February, the Ice Age relic is then to be handed over to the Siegsdorf Natural History and Mammoth Museum.

In conserving and interpreting the rare find, Braun relied on chance.

After a chance meeting with Norbert Strauss, member and author of the project group of the Holzkirchner Geo-Lehrpfad, the expert looked at the find and identified it as a molar tooth of a mammoth.

This was confirmed by the Bavarian State Collection for Palaeontology and Geology in Munich, which asked Strauss to identify the fossil more precisely.

A comparative study showed that the type and size of the molar (back tooth) came from a young adult, presumably female, woolly mammoth.

The tooth is about four inches long, a good two inches wide and nine and a half inches high.

The site is on Dietramszeller Flur, about two and a half kilometers west of the Teufelsgraben crossing of state road 2073 Holzkirchen-Dietramszell.

Gravel is now being quarried there.

Based on the geologically defined discovery site in the northern slope of the Würm end moraine of the Wolfratshausen lobe of the Isar-Loisach glacier, the age of the fossil can be deduced to be around 25,000 years.

Because during the Würm glacial maximum the vegetation and thus the nutritional basis for a mammoth in the glacier foreland was sparse, it remains a mystery how the tooth got into the moraine debris.

According to the experts, one possibility of how the tooth got into the moraine debris could be that the young animal, which is relatively easy to hunt, was deliberately driven into the narrow glacier in order to kill it.

Since the State Collection for Palaeontology did not have the personnel capacity for the absolutely necessary preservation of the tooth and the money for an external restoration costing around 500 euros, Strauss' network came to the rescue.

Thanks to the longstanding, good contacts with Robert Darga, head of the natural history and mammoth museum in Siegsdorf, Strauss received detailed instructions and the recipe for treating the tooth.

In a six-week procedure of several immersion baths in strong-smelling solvents with synthetic resins and slow drying phases, it was possible to stabilize the tooth and, in a jigsaw puzzle, to restore it to its original state.

Until the preparation is handed over to the Siegsdorfer Museum in February and is exhibited there in a tooth display case, the extraordinary tooth can now be admired in Holzkirchner town hall.

Genealogically, mammoths belong to the Elephantidae family.

You get teeth six times in your life.

However, only one is available as a chewing surface at a time.

If this wears out, it is slowly pushed forward by the next larger tooth in the jaw and breaks off piece by piece.

After wearing out the sixth teeth, the animals must starve if they don't die first.