The Mammoth Exhibit
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The museum exhibits a casting of America's largest Imperial mammoth on the second floor of the museum in the geology gallery. The mammoth was found in Nevada's Black Rock Desert north of Reno. In the display, the museum has reconstructed his death scene fight for life in a small, mud-glazed water hole. Museum artist Barbara Herlan painted the mural behind the gigantic mammoth in 1990. An Oregon logger, Steve Wallmann, first discovered the mammoth in 1979. He reported it to William Clewlow Jr., an archaeologist with extensive experience in Black Rock Desert archaeology and a Nevada State Museum research associate. Eventually Clewlow's crew dug out the entire skeleton with the help of several volunteers and the expertise of Nevada State Museum Curator of Anthropology Donald R. Tuohy and others. Many visitors may confuse it with the better-known woolly mammoth, which is a much smaller species. Museum anthropologist Amy Dansie said the mammoth was originally thought to be a Columbian mammoth because of the assumed late Pleistocene age, but a mammoth expert identified the teeth as representing an Imperial mammoth. Imperial mammoths reigned more than 100,000 years ago in America. Scientists don't know when or whether the mammoths evolved into the Columbian mammoth or became extinct. "We also do not have a firm date on this mammoth, but a nearby site dated by the Desert Research Institute suggests a date between 15,000 and 17,000 years ago," Dansie said. |
Posted Dec. 1998
Copyright 1998 Nevada Outpost