Carson man isn't looking ice-age gift horse in the mouth

Mel Tinker is an avid collector of unique rocks and minerals. He spends a good portion of his time walking throughout the city looking for the newest gem to add to his collection.

During his walks, he has found many interesting things, including a check for $12,500 and a brand-new driver's license, but never anything as big as what he discovered in early January.

On Jan. 5, Tinker was walking with his companion, Louise Hunt, both 80, when they spotted something out of place.

"We were walking along the Carson River, and I was on the lookout for rocks when I saw it laying there near the river," Tinker said.

"We didn't know what it was. We thought it was a bone of some kind," Hunt said.

Then while hiking in the same area two days later, Hunt came across a similar find, this one slightly smaller but remarkably similar to the first.

Their curiosity peaked, the pair took the oddly shaped brown stones to the Nevada State Museum and were told they were fossils, very old ones.

For more information, he was referred to Dr. Thomas Kelly, vertebrate paleontologist with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the W.M. Keck Museum at the University of Nevada, Reno.

"They were two horse teeth that had been fossilized. We can't identify these teeth down to an individual species. But based on where they were found and the teeth themselves, they came from the Rancholabrean Era," Green said.

That means the teeth were between 10,000 and 250,000 years old, and based upon where they were found, Green puts them at about 25,000 years old, lost during the time of one of the ice ages.

"You talk about shocked - when they told us how old they were, that was shocked," Tinker said.

While Green wasn't able to give an exact species of horse, he could say that it was part of the original Old World horse species, which died out more than 1,000 years ago. The horse was probably medium-size, in about the 16-hand range - about the same size as a mustang. However, the species could grow much larger, getting into the 18- to 20-hand range.

A hand is a unit used to measure the height of the horse at the shoulder, and equals 4 inches.

"It's pretty amazing when you stop and think about it. You are handling something that is over 25,000 years old," Tinker said.

Green said that it is important for the public to bring forward fossil finds like Tinker's because they could provide important information to researchers.

"When you find something, it is best to bring it forward because what if you found a new species? That would be a major scientific discovery that we need to know about," Green said.

Tinker said now that he knows what they are, he wants the state museum to have the fossils. But first, he is loaning them to his grandson to take to school.

"They will go to the museum. They were found here, and they will stay here," Tinker said.

-- Contact reporter Jarid Shipley at jshipley@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1217.