By Marshall Lee Weimer
I was on the hunt for teeth.
The rich, dark, wet earth forced itself under my fingernails as I scratched through roots and a few beetles.
But no teeth. I needed those teeth.
Or that’s what Clay Ecklund, my expedition leader, told our team of volunteer bone seekers recently on Isle Royale National Park. I squatted in the middle of a thick cedar swamp with John Warming and Lada Zednik. Nearby, Hal Hanson, another member of our group, sat behind a few downed trees, resting from an arduous hike through nearly unnavigable terrain.
There was another presence. Or what remained of one. We were at a moose calf’s final resting place, trying to piece together its skeleton. All the bones were there, the mandibles, the metatarsus, parts of the skull. But no teeth.