From the Pleistocene of central Florida, it is a mineralized and weathered tusk—whether of a mastodon or a mammoth I’m not sure, but from a relative of the elephant...hence my hint “one to remember.” A further clue was the distinctive cross-hatch pattern characteristic of ivory. Congratulations to—well, to me, for stumping you all. But kudos to Steve Bowden who discerned what would have been a really clever allusion to Pliny the Elder in the quotation from Walter Pater’s Marius the Epicurean if only I had thought to include it. (In fact, the quotation only appeared because I was in need of over-the-top eloquence on short notice.) A jaunty wave of the proboscis to Dan Phelps and his fabulous wheat penny for the photograph and his description of the further clue.
