Word: tusk
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Insanely popeyed, ponderously oozy, hideously fierce of tusk and whisker, a full-grown sea-elephant suggests some monstrous abortion of the animal kingdom's primal urge. Shrewd John Ringling told the public about sea elephants through Calvin Coolidge. When he took his circus to Washington in 1928 Mr. Ringling called at the White House, casually mentioned to President Coolidge that he had a sea elephant in the show. Mr. Coolidge nodded his head, went to see for himself. He discovered that the sea elephant is just an overgrown species of seal (Mirunga leoninus or patagonica), carnivorous, mammalian, with a flexible...
...long. Arched across its deck from stern to bow are two braced beams. They resemble sled runners. They really are runners, to enable the vessel to skid against the under side of polar ice. From the blunt, concrete-reinforced bow projects a long tubular feeler like the solitary tusk of the male narwhal. If under the dark ice the ship strikes an object (whale, rock, island, berg) which its great sub- aqueous searchlights do not disclose, the projecting feeler will ram back against compressed air and so absorb most of the shock. Since the boat will cruise at 3 knots...
...tusk was found sticking in a river bank, which was 200 feat high, at that point. Half of the tusk was protruding from the bank, the other half being wedged between stratas of rock, as was discovered when excavations were made in the attempt to dig it up. This work took several days, as care had to be taken not to injure the tooth, which, although cracked in places, was otherwise in excellent condition...
Heretofore the largest mastodon tusk was in the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, a specimen measuring nine feet. The Harvard specimen is over two feet longer than the Carnegie specimen, and scientists have estimated that, during the 50,000 years it lay in the earth, corrosion has reduced its size at least two feet, making its former length well over 13 feet...
Efforts are being made to locate the mate of the tooth, and it is hoped that other remains of the monstrosity will be uncovered. The erosion of the river bank at the point where the tusk was found, was most fortunate, as it would not have been discovered otherwise, due to the depth at which it was buried...