Prehistoric Museum Mammoth 25th Anniversary Celebration

With 60 people in attendance two spectacular exhibits were unveiled on 8/8/2013 at the Huntington Mammoth’s 25^th Anniversary Celebration.

The Ice Age Utah exhibit is bilingual and has drawers that contain hands-on activities.

The Importance of the Huntington Mammoth exhibit displays actual bone for the first time.

After the unveilings, attendees were treated to viewing the original movie of the mammoth excavation followed by a lecture by Dr. Tim Riley, the museum's curator of archaeology.

The evening ended with wonderful refreshments provided by the Castle Valley Archaeological Society, (CVAS) with cookies and a mammoth cake from the Manti-La Sal National Forest for desert.

 

 

There was much reminiscing and recounting by those in attendance and a rekindling of the unity that was felt 25 years ago when Chris Nielson, of Nielson Construction encountered bones while excavating for the Huntington Dam a mammoth project presented itself to the public. In just five days various entities, including the Forest Service, the museum, CVAS, Nielson Construction, the Utah State Paleontologist and Archaeologist, and a host of volunteers were able to accomplish the magnificent feat of retrieving the mammoth from its muddy bog of a grave, stabilizing the bones and getting them to the for further stabilization and study.

Something that many may not realize is that the mammoth bones were not fossilized, but rather remarkably preserved in the thick mud bog some 15 feet below the earth’s surface. Therefore, the condition of these bones allowed for more extensive study of the bones to take place.

As most may know, the original bones were reposited at the College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum, but that wasn't an easy feat either. The museum had to become a nationally accredited institution and a federal repository. Through the years up into the current administration under Dr. Kenneth Carpenter, the museum's director and curator of paleontology, the mammoth has been a showcase piece and the center of scientific study. Most recently, analysis of the mitochondrial DNA of the Huntington Mammoth suggested that there was much more interbreeding between Columbian and Wooly Mammoths than researchers previously thought (http://genomebiology.com/content/12/5/R51).  Somewhere in his ancestry, at least one of the Huntington Mammoth’s great-grandmas was a wooly, previously thought to be a distinct species.  A new study is underway to look at the nuclear DNA of this remarkably preserved specimen. This study may shed further light on the complex evolutionary history of these incredible North American elephants.