One exhibit stands out from the rest at the Rochester Museum and Science Center (RMSC): Expedition Earth. This educational exhibit gives visitors a chance to “work and think like a paleontologist” to learn more about Ice-Age giants like the mastodon.
Visitors can scavenge a mastodon dig site to uncover replica fossils and compare them to the bones of the two different mastodon skeletons discovered in New York. The first one was found at Farview Gold Course, near Avon, in 1990, while the Visitors can dig up replica mastodon bones at RMSC’s Expedition Earth exhibit second was found four years later in East Bloomfield. Both are displayed beneath the mounted fiberglass cast mastodon skeleton—the finished product of a 229-piece puzzle, ranging from ribs to tusks.
Although mastodons diverged from the main elephant lineage (Elephantidae) around twenty-five million years ago, they had roughly the same size tusks as the modern African elephant. Mastodon tusks were essentially enlarged teeth, which would start to form at birth and continue to grow throughout their lifetime. By measuring the growth bands of these tusks, scientists were able to estimate the age of the Farview mastodon.
George McIntosh from the RMSC talked to (585) Kids about what they discovered about these two mastodons and how they lived 11,000 to 12,000 years ago, before they mysteriously went extinct.
“We didn’t have any tusk materials, so we couldn’t really age [the Bloomfield mastodon], whereas with the Farview mastodon, we found the tip of one tusk that’s fairly complete, and then a fragmentary portion of the other one,” McIntosh says. “We took a little section out of there and we were able to look at the growth bands. We were able to say that he’s probably twenty years old or so.”
These mastodons’ teeth and bones were also used in determining their age before they died. The Bloomfield mastodon had a worn-out tooth with no roots and a fused back, which indicates that it was an older adult. McIntosh estimates the Farview mastodon to have been younger, while the Bloomfield mastodon was likely in his forties.
In this exhibit, both mastodons are displayed in glass cases for visitors to observe and learn from. Before their extinction, mastodons “ruled the forest” in herds, weighing as much as six tons (12,000 pounds) each.
“Starting about two million years ago they started showing up both in Alaska and as far south as Mexico. They came in by crossing the land bridge, possibly during some interglacial period,” McIntosh says. “Then about 10,000 years ago, they all just went extinct—but they weren’t the only ones.”
Although mastodons and many other Ice-Age mammals went extinct around the same time, scientists can’t agree on what led to their demise. One theory suggests humans hunted them to extinction.
“There’s no doubt about it that there weren’t people here two million years ago. They weren’t here even 500,000 years ago. Is it just a coincidence that all these large animals go extinct when people arrive or not?” McIntosh says.
What happened to the mastodons? No one really knows for sure. At RMSC’s dig site, you’ll be able to come up with your own theories, and perhaps crack the case yourself.
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