Behind the Scenes at the Museum: Unearthing a Mastodon
Natural Sciences Gallery
Presented by the Natural Sciences Department

Museum preparators unearthed a mastodon skeleton at the Oakland Museum of California Natural Sciences Gallery in full view of the public, in an experiment they call "turning the museum inside out." During museum hours visitors viewed the project and talked with the preparators and volunteers as they exposed the bones in preparation for making molds and casts of the skeleton. Adjoining the work area were specimens and interpretive materials depicting mastodon, mammoth and other Pleistocene (Ice Age) species, including giant ground sloth and saber-tooth cat skeletons.

The Rustler Ranch Mastodon Project provides a behind-the-scenes view of some of the work that goes into creating a museum exhibit. The behind-the-scenes view adds a new, active dimension to the gallery. Lindsay Dixon, chief preparator in the museum's Natural Sciences department, reports that visitors to the mastodon work area were fascinated by the size of the skeleton and seeing the bones up close, and liked to compare them to the size of their own bones. Children wanted to hear the story of how the fossil was discovered and were excited by the idea that mastodons once lived here in California. Watching the process of uncovering the bones, they often declare that they want to be archeologists or paleontologists themselves.

In the second phase of the project, the reproduction skeleton will be assembled and installed in a new paleontology section of the Natural Sciences Gallery depicting a partial recreation of the dig site. The Rustler Ranch mastodon exhibit will give a sense of what an actual paleontology dig is like. When completed, it will provide a focus for discussion of how fossils are discovered, the processes of deposition and fossilization, dating of fossils, ways of evaluating past environments, and the excavation, removal and transport of large fossil material.

The project began when members of the museum's Natural Sciences department brought a nearly complete fossil skeleton of an American mastodon (Mammut americanum), a distant relative of the modern elephant, to the museum in October 1999. The fossilized bones, found lying in their anatomically correct positions at Rustler Ranch in northeastern California, had been virtually undisturbed.

The mastodon was discovered by a ranch hand who spied a part of an animal's tooth sticking out of the soil at a stream bank. Further investigation revealed that the skeleton was buried under six to eight feet of soil and occupied an area 10 by 12 feet. Roger Fiddler, owner of Rustler Ranch, removed the soil above the skeleton. He then invited the museum's Natural Sciences staff to help in final excavation and removal of the fossil mastodon.

	Rustler Ranch Mastodon Web Project

The skeleton was much too large to remove in one piece, so bone clusters that could be easily and safely removed were identified, and each of these was encased in a hard shell of plaster and burlap to stabilize and protect it during removal and transport. The rib cage was too complex to divide in the short time available, so the ground under it was excavated and large wooden timbers used to support it. The rib cage and other large sections were then removed from the pit by a very large tractor. The mastodon is on loan to the museum from owner Roger Fiddler through June 2002.

Mastodons first migrated into North America from Asia about 15 million years ago. The American mastodon, a more recent species, ranged across North America between Alaska and central Mexico. A large, elephant-like herbivore, the American mastodon could reach a height of 10 feet. Its name comes from the Greek mastos (breast) and odont (tooth), referring to its teeth, which are crowned by distinct rounded cusps, very different from mammoths and modern elephants. Mastodons became extinct at the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago.

Project leader for the Rustler Ranch Mastodon Project is Tom Steller, Chief Curator of Natural Sciences at the museum. Consulting paleontologists participating in the project are Bruce Hansen and Mark Goodwin from the U.C. Berkeley Museum of Paleontology.

The Rustler Ranch Mastodon Project is made possible by the generous support of the Oakland Museum Women's Board, the Natural Sciences Guild, an anonymous supporter of the Natural Sciences Department, McKessonHBOC Foundation, and participants in the museum's "Adopt-a-Bone" campaign.

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