Mammoth Exhibit At Missouri History Museum Takes Visitors Back In Time

A life-like replica of Columbian mammoth looms large over visitors who step into the Missouri History Museum these days.

The 14-foot-tall replica is part of the museum's “Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age” exhibit, which continues through April 15. The exhibit is on loan from The Field Museum of Chicago.

Mammoth history on display

Mammoths inhabited North and Central America during the Pleistocene and Holocene eras and shared space with early residents of what became Missouri.

Two displays in the museum put history into perspective. One wall has a family tree for the proboscideans, which includes mastodons, mammoths and elephants. It shows how they all started in the same “trunk” of the tree before branching off to different genetic destinations.

On the other side of the entrance, a large screen allows visitors to travel back to the days of mammoths and mastodons. It starts with a view of downtown St. Louis as it appears today before going back in time. Buildings deconstruct and disappear, then the land alternates between lush forest and Pleistocene ice and snow. Then woolly mammoths arrive, wandering the grassy savannah and trumpeting like elephants.

The last mammoths known to exist lived on Wrangel Island in Siberia until 3,700 years ago, around the time the Egyptians were building the pyramids.

Interacting with mammoths

While they are gone, these magnificent beasts are not forgotten. Among the treasures in the exhibit are mammoth skulls, jaws and tusks, plus teeth, hair and skin.

A one-month-old woolly mammoth that drowned or suffocated and was almost perfectly preserved. This female mammoth, named “Lyuba,” which is Russian for “love,” died 42,000 years ago in Siberia. She was just discovered in 2007, and scientists are understandably excited about the possibilities.

“It’s just incredible,” David Lobbig, the museum’s curator of environmental life, said. “She is the most intact, best preserved specimen of her kind. It really tells a story. It’s like aving an encyclopedia handed to you.”

Luckily for scientists, many mammoths lived and died during the icy Peistocene, and their remains were preserved well enough to leave plenty of material for study.

Interactive, “please touch” displays give visitors a chance to see how the trunk of a mammoth works, or feel the hair of musk ox, which had hair similar to a wooly mammoth.

Ken and Karen Cella of St. Peters, came to the exhibit because they love learning and have a fascination with elephants.

“I’ve already texted two pictures to my son, to get him to bring my grandson,” Karen Cella said. “This is the most awesome exhibit. We are loving it.”

Getting There

The Missouri History Museum is at 5700 Lindell Blvd. at the intersection of DeBaliviere at Forest Park in St. Louis. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesdays, when admission is free to residents of St. Louis city and county.

Admission to “Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age” is $15 adults. $13 seniors, students, groups and active military, and $10 for children 4-12. Children age three and under are admitted free, as are K-12 school groups with reservations. For more information, call 314-746-4599.