Mammoth excavation topic of May 16 talk
Dr. Gary Stringer will give an illustrated talk on a wooly mammoth tusk that was excavated from a West Texas gravel pit on Thursday, May 16, at 5:30 p.m. in the Union Museum of History and Art—Discovery Place, 211 N. Main Street, Farmerville. Admission is free.
The Ice Age fossil, eight feet long, was unearthed in 1976 between Breckenridge and Abilene. Dr. Stringer, then a graduate student at Northeast Louisiana University, was one of five students along with Dr. Hugh Doney, professor of geosciences, who extracted the tusk. Today Dr. Stringer is Professor Emeritus of Geology at the University of Louisiana-Monroe.
This event is in conjunction with the Union Museum's exhibit "Expedition: Ice Age" on display through August 3. The display, from the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, features fossils and replicas of fossils of Ice Age creatures such as the saber-toothed cat, mammoths, giant beavers, terror bird, American lion, mastodons, and giant sloth.
A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus Mammuthus, with various species existing in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. Mammoths are distinguished from living elephants by their large spirally twisted tusks and, at least for some later species, the development of numerous adaptations to living in cold environments, including a thick layer of fur.