Benjamin Franklin's Mastodon Tooth

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Franklin and others compared the mastodon’s features with similar fossils and living animals around the world. With this information, these natural philosophers proposed that the animal was "extinct". Identifying fossils as those of extinct animals undermined the classical and medieval concept of the universe known as 'The Great Chain of Being'.

Thus, the mastodon tooth from Franklin’s property represents the scientific story of fossil mastodon bones in Franklin’s life – and Franklin’s world. This specimen represents a time when society’s basic values and beliefs were being restructured by Enlightenment ideas, and the tooth is physical evidence of Franklin’s role in transforming the prevailing view of the world.