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Benjamin Franklin's Mastodon Tooth

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Ancient Mastodons and the Enlightenment
Sketch of extinct mastodon, with inset photograph of mastodon tooth

Sketch of extinct mastodon, with inset photograph of mastodon tooth found on Benjamin Franklin's property.

Drawing Sarah Jeppson (2005), photograph Peter Harholdt (2004)
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The mastodon tooth, now preserved at the Independence National Historical Park, is an artifact of Franklin’s role in the social and scientific movement called the Enlightenment. Further, the tooth was a building block for the natural philosophers of the 18th and 19th century as they came to understand the process of evolution.

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