The Mammoth Site hosted a public forum earlier this month in which paleontologists offered an update on their recent work. SDPB’s Jim Kent attended the presentation and spoke with 2 scientists about their journeys to the Channel Islands and Siberia.
Anyone who’s visited the Mammoth Site knows this is the place to find out everything you wanted to know about mammoths – both woolly and columbian.
But tonight….the presentations start on the West coast…and then Move to one of the coldest areas on the planet – in northern Asia. Jim Mead is the Mammoth Site’s new director. He says that after 30 years of research on the site’s mammoth bones…it’s time to branch out to other related areas. Besides California’s Channel Islands and Siberia, the Mammoth Site team is also involved in research at Sonora, Mexico…Australia and at Wind Cave National Park.
“We’re going to see this place grow and become more robust,” explains Mead. “Not that we’re going to become huge…we’re going to become robust in what we do…in what we offer.”
Mead adds that the Mammoth Site will see substantial change over the next two years with more researchers, more education for students and teachers and a broader area of interest for the general public.
“They’re going to find these little stations around the room,” says Mead. “And…’Well…what are you working on? Oh…I’m working on a ground sloth.’ ‘Well, what are you working on?’ ‘Oh…I’m working on a glyptodon from Mexico.’ So…they’re going to see that there’s more going on here.”
Mead says that also includes research on a steppe bison and a 34,000-year old baby woolly mammoth named Sasha….both from Siberia. He says the new exhibit research stations are open to the public this summer.
Related links:
The Mammoth Site
The Siberian Times - Article on "Sasha" - the world's only baby woolly rhino