Inside: Exhibition Introduction & Curriculum Connections

 

Guiding Questions:

1.   Why do some people think woolly mammoths only lived in snowy, cold climates?

 

 Some people think this because these are often the environments where ancient animals’ remains preserve well. 

Mammoth remains do not preserve as well as in warmer climates; thus, fewer remains are uncovered in warmer 

climates. 

2.   How do scientists better understand what the mammoth diet was in a particular region?

 

 Scientists analyze mammoth dung to determine what mammoths ate. For example, preserved mammoth dung from 

a cave in Utah named “Bechan” contains fragments of vegetation suggesting a diet rich in grasses, sedges, and other 

plants. These plants suggest that Utah, during the time of the mammoths, was fairly dry with pockets of wetlands. 

Visitors to 

Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of 

the Ice Age will be able to see fossil skulls, as well 

as life-size replicas of these ancient beasts.  

© http://www.paleoart.com

Exhibit Area Overviews 

---

 

Page 7

A Prehistoric Drama: Sharing the Stage with Humans

For tens of thousands of years, humans lived alongside mammoths and mastodons. Early peoples painted 

images of mammoths inside the caves of southwest Europe. And in North America, people hunted both 

mammoths and mastodons with spears (and bravery!). Some scientists hypothesize that humans directly caused 

the extinction of mammoths and mastodons. Others suggest that climate change was to blame. Whatever the 

cause, by 12,000 years ago, nearly all mammoths and mastodons had disappeared from mainland Eurasia and 

North America. 

Thomas Jefferson, America’s third President, was a naturalist. He commissioned William Clark (of “Lewis and 

Clark”) to go west after Clark had returned from his exploration of the Louisiana Purchase to collect mastodon 

bones for Jefferson’s private collection. During his 1807 expedition to Big Bone Lick, Kentucky, William Clark 

uncovered spear points along with the bones of mastodons. Clark’s find was the first to suggest that early peoples 

once hunted mastodons in North America. 

In addition, depictions of mammoths from Paleolithic times have been found in Eurasia, but no prehistoric 

images of mammoths are known to exist in North America. In 2007, however, underwater archaeologists 

found what appears to be a rock carving of a mastodon in Lake Michigan’s Grand Traverse Bay. And in 2009, 

an amateur fossil hunter in Vero Beach, Florida, found what appears to be an engraving of a mastodon (or 

mammoth) on ancient bone. Scientists are trying to authenticate both objects.

Guiding Questions: