Mammoth, Ice Age exhibit at Indiana State Museum, US
Mammoth is a permanent exhibit at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis that displays real skeletal remains and fossils of mammoths and mastodons found across Indiana. The bones on display are actual specimens recovered from excavations, not reproductions.
The collection grew mainly from finds made by paleontologists in southern Indiana starting in the early 1990s. Those discoveries shifted how researchers understood the presence of large Ice Age mammals in the region.
The exhibit shows how mammoths and mastodons were two different animals, and the skeletal displays make those differences easy to see in person. Their teeth alone tell a lot: one species chewed plants differently from the other, which is visible right on the bones.
The exhibit is part of the general museum entry, so no separate ticket is needed to see it. The layout is easy to follow, and visitors can spend as much or as little time as they like at each display.
The Buesching mastodon on display is made up entirely of real bones, with no casts or replica parts mixed in, which is rare for a skeleton of this size. This makes it one of the few specimens in the world that researchers can study directly without working from copies.
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