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Mammoth Tusk
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| Accession #: | NN2003.89 |
|---|---|
| Title: | Mammoth Tusk |
| Object Type: | Specimen, Animal |
| Participants: | |
| Physical Description: | Large, lyre shaped tusk, either ivory or bone, possibly fossilized; volunteer cataloger indicated that it is very weathered with several fractures, but in one piece. |
| Description: | Imagine the ancestors of modern elephants grazing the Palouse Hills. Mammoths with dramatically curved tusks ranged across Eastern Washington during Earth's most recent ice age. In 1876, two homesteading families unearthed a trove of mammoth bones and tusks along Latah and Pine Creeks, and trundled their discoveries to county fairs from Colfax to Portland. Ten years later, Chicago's Field Museum assembled parts of several Latah Creek animals into North America's first mounted mammoth skeleton, 13 feet tall at the shoulder. The American Museum of Natural History purchased an 800-pound Pine Creek skull to be a type specimen - the fossil that defines the Columbia mammoth species. This partial mammoth tusk measures eight feet on the curve; it did not come from the Latah sites mentioned above, where tusks as long as 10 feet were recovered. |
| Category: | History |
| Subjects/Topics/Concepts: |
Natural History (Natural History)
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| Dimensions: |
height 33"
length 96"
depth 19"
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| Materials/Techniques: |
ivory (Material)
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| Related Exhibits: | |
| Credit Line: | Found in Collections, 2003 |
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