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Sergey Grishin, Director of the Shemanovsky Museum.
© Suburban Journals of  Chicago Inc. photo

An Asian Elephant, a African Savanna Elephant, and a African Forest Elephant, Living Relatives of the Great Family from Millions of Years Ago.

Sergey Grishin, Director of the Shemanovsky Museum
Presents President and CEO of the Field Museum, John McCarter
a Russian Bronze Coin Celebrating the Exhibit of Lyuba (Люба)
on display in Chicago  (the date on the coin indicates the year
that Lyuba (Люба) was found ).
© Suburban Journals of  Chicago Inc. photos

Professor Dan Fisher Welcomes Visitors to the Opening of
the Exhibit.
© Suburban Journals of  Chicago Inc. photo

Dr. James Phillips Co-Curator of the Lyuba exhibit poses with
a large adult cave bear.
© Suburban Journals of  Chicago Inc. photo

Dr. Phillips showed us many of the stone tools on display at the exhibit as well as some interesting cave art.  Dr. Phillips was very helpful in getting the Museum's last King Tut exhibit here and his knowledge of primative man and his tools is well known in the scientific community.  He also told us when we  discussed the size of the cave bear and the danger in mixing paths with one of these powerful beasts, that humans had killed many of them--while the bears were hibernating and rather helpless.  These mega predators would be more than formidable when fully awake.

This ice carving of a woolly mammoth greeted the opening
with clear warnings of Winter's end.
© Suburban Journals of  Chicago Inc. photo

National Geographic Presentation of the Find

Full Sized Photo of Lyuba in Laboratory

Lyuba: Waking the Baby

The Field Museum exhibition, Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age takes visitors on a journey back to the time when these huge creatures roamed the Earth. The exhibition gives museumgoers unique opportunities to:

Discover Mammoth and Mastodon Origins and Evolutionary Adaptations

    The family tree of elephants, mammoths, and mastodons can be traced back 55 million years when the proboscidean order originated in Africa. Trunks and tusks are the hallmark of proboscideans (pronounced pro-bo-SID-e-ans). In the first section of the exhibition, visitors encounter a full-size model of Moeritherium (Mer-i-THER-ee-um), an ancient cousin of mammoths, mastodons and elephants, displayed as it might have looked grazing in a North African wetland some 35 million years ago. Surprisingly, Moeritherium did not resemble its later cousins – it was somewhat larger than a modern-day tapir, but with short legs, a relatively long body, and a short tail.

    This introductory section also features a proboscidean family tree with touchable scale models of family members, including a woolly mammoth, a Columbian mammoth, and an American mastodon.  The family tree illustrates how mastodons split off, forming the Mammutidae family – now extinct – while mammoths and elephants are part of the Elephantidae family.

    Visitors can examine skull casts and fossil jaws, teeth, and tusks to learn more about early evolutionary adaptations. Hands-on interactive displays teach visitors about two distinctive features of proboscideans: trunks and tusks. Visitors can try their hand at picking up objects by manipulating a mechanical trunk. In another interactive, visitors can help a mammoth balance the weight of its tusks. 

Marvel at Lyuba, the Best-Preserved Baby Mammoth

    The centerpiece of Mammoths and Mastodons is Lyuba (Lee-OO-bah), the remarkably well-preserved, 40,000-year-old baby mammoth found in 2007 by a Siberian reindeer herder and two of his sons. The Field Museum’s exhibition marks the first time Lyuba has been shown in the United States, and she is sure to inspire what curator Dan Fisher calls “a visceral awe” among museumgoers. 

    Amazingly, Lyuba was preserved with most of her features intact, including internal organs, making it possible for scientists to perform several tests including DNA analysis and CT scans. Lyuba’s intestinal contents provide excellent information about what mammoths in Siberia ate during the Ice Age. The baby’s intestine also contained traces of adult feces, probably her mother’s, confirming that baby mammoths, like modern elephant offspring, eat their mom’s excrement to ingest the bacteria needed for proper digestion and a healthy gut.

    Discoveries of preserved mammoths, of which Lyuba is the finest example, have greatly supplemented clues already gathered from other fossils to give scientists a better picture about how these animals lived.


    Mammoths and mastodons displayed social organization and behavior patterns similar to those of today’s elephants. Exhibition visitors can discover more about social hierarchy and behavior by viewing a video that compares evidence found in the mammoth fossil record with modern-day elephant behavior. The video will introduce excavation sites where scientists have found entire mammoth family groups that died all at once in single catastrophic events.  The sites show a range of age and gender within the group, dominated by adult females, suggesting that mammoths – like modern elephants – lived in matriarchal groups that excluded sexually mature males.

    Also featured in the video will be fossil evidence of adult male mammoths sparring for dominance. Nearby, in a fun learning activity, exhibition visitors are invited to joust with tusks, imitating behavior of the beasts seeking to win breeding rights as they roamed the landscape of Siberia thousands of years ago.
   
Explore Diverse Ice Age Ecosystems

    Even though mammoths and mastodons lived during the Ice Age, and many species inhabited colder, northern territories, the beasts also thrived in different ecosystems throughout the world.

“Ice Age” is a popular term for what scientists call the Pleistocene (Plice-TOE-seen) Epoch, a long period of hundreds of thousands of years when continental ice sheets extended over large areas of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Yet despite the increased ice coverage, there was still a diversity of environments and climatic regions throughout the world during the Pleistocene Epoch. An interactive allows visitors to match several species of proboscideans with their respective Pleistocene habitats. 

    In this part of the exhibition, visitors walk through a gallery that evokes the western United States as it appeared 20,000 years ago. Here, visitors are greeted by a full-scale replica of a Columbian mammoth, one of the largest mammals to roam North America (standing nearly 14 feet tall at the shoulder).  Nearby are full-scale replicas of a saber-tooth cat and a short-faced bear (both now extinct). The diversity of plant life in this ecosystem provided a veritable salad bar for mammoths. A display of plant specimens from The Field Museum’s extensive botany collections features six different kinds of grasses and plants that mammoths once feasted upon. An interactive display enables visitors to calculate how much a mammoth had to eat, an estimated 500 pounds of vegetation per day!

    Fossils and life-sized replicas of other Ice Age animals and examples of their tracks and dung provide a picture of life in that era. Here, museumgoers can even see real mammoth dung, preserved for thousands of years in the dry caves of southern Utah. 

Learn the Difference Between a Mastodon and a Mammoth

    In North America, mastodons lived side-by-side with their cousins, the mammoths.  Mastodons were shorter and stockier than mammoths, with thicker bones and differently shaped tusks.  Diet, however, was the major difference between the two animals. Mammoths grazed largely on grasses while mastodons browsed on leaves, twigs, and bark. Differences in the molars found in fossils show how mammoth molars, with low ridges, were well suited for grinding grasses, while the bulbous cusps of mastodon molars were perfect for shredding bark, twigs, and leaves.  Because the two animals ate different diets, they did not compete with each other for food and therefore could share the same environment. 

Curator Dan Fisher is an expert on mastodons and has excavated several from his home state of native Michigan. As part of his research, Dr. Fisher examines and analyzes hundreds of mastodon tusks. A video presents some of Fisher’s findings, including how mastodon (and mammoth) tusks grow in layers over time, like ice cream cones stacked one upon another. Dr. Fisher examines tusk growth patterns that give clues to how the animals lived and died. The thickest growth occurred in summers when food was more abundant, while winter growth layers were thinner.

Discover Thomas Jefferson’s Favorite Enigma

After Lewis and Clark made their famous expedition across North America to the Pacific Ocean, President Thomas Jefferson sent William Clark back on the road in 1807 to find and collect mastodon bones.  Jefferson was intrigued by this mysterious beast, and Clark was successful in finding mastodon bones for Jefferson’s own personal collection at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky, the birthplace of American paleontology. Clark also found spear points at the site, suggesting that ancient peoples had once hunted these large beasts. In this part of the exhibition, visitors can see some of Jefferson’s own mastodon bones and ancient spear points collected by Clark during this expedition.

Learn About Human Interaction and Artistic Inspiration

Unlike dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, mastodons and mammoths lived side by side with humans for thousands of years. Some people hunted the big-tusked animals and found that killing a mammoth in the autumn was good insurance against starving over the winter. This section of the exhibition gives visitors a chance to examine spear points (called Clovis points) used by early hunters of North America. A small-scale diorama re-creates a mastodon hunting scene at the site of Kimmswick, Missouri, where scientists discovered the remains of mastodons and Clovis points. In an adjacent display case, visitors can see actual bones and points excavated from the Kimmswick site.

Mammoths and mastodons were not only a source of food.  In Europe, early people were inspired by these impressive beasts and depicted them in cave paintings and miniature carvings made of bone, stone, and mammoth ivory during Paleolithic times.  Mammoths even provided building material for houses!  After viewing a display of figurines made from mammoth ivory in Paleolithic times (including some of the oldest art in existence, dating from between 35,000 and 10,000 years ago), visitors can discover a touchable scale model of a mammoth “bone hut.”

Nearby is an interactive display featuring prehistoric depictions of mammoths painted on cave walls in southwest France.

Investigate the Extinction Mystery

    Here, visitors are introduced to different theories for explaining the extinction of mammoths and mastodons. Theories abound, but not one explains the extinction to everyone’s satisfaction.

    Climate change is a strong contender. The biggest die-off seems to have occurred about 10,000 years ago as the Ice Age ended and temperatures rose.  Did this cause mammoth and mastodon habitats to shrink, stressing populations?

    In some areas, including North America’s Great Lakes region, fossils suggest that these creatures continued to thrive, despite a warmer climate. Some scientists believe mammoths and mastodons eventually were done in by humans who hunted them.

Other theories posit that a meteorite hit the Earth, altering the environment enough to trigger a great die-off, or that some kind of cross-species disease infected the animals. Some scientists think that various combinations of these events wiped out the great beasts.

    Even though most mammoths and mastodons went extinct as the Ice Age ended, radiocarbon dates on some fossils show that isolated populations lived until about 4,000 years ago.

    Some of these creatures lived on remote islands and were much smaller than their huge cousins that lived in mainland environments. The exhibition features specimens of dwarf mammoths from Wrangel Island in the Arctic Sea off the coast of Russia, representing the last mammoths on Earth.

Ponder the Fate of the Survivors

    At the close of the exhibition, visitors discover more about today’s elephants in Africa and Asia and how they are threatened. This section addresses the questions: What can these elephants tell us about their extinct cousins? And, what must be done to save modern elephants from extinction?

    Only three species of elephants survive today: the Asian elephant, which is the closest relative to the mammoth, and the savannah and forest elephants in Africa. Diminished habitat and ivory hunters are two major threats to elephants now.

THE FIELD MUSEUM PRESENTS
MAMMOTHS AND MASTODONS: TITANS OF THE ICE AGE
MARCH 5 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
Real, 40,000-Year-Old Baby Mammoth is Centerpiece of Exhibition
First Time This Remarkable Specimen Has Been Shown in United States

For millions of years they survived, living in temperate climates and on the wind-swept lands of the frozen north – great beasts weighing as much as eight tons and bearing tusks up to16 feet long. Mammoths and mastodons were wonderfully successful creatures of the Ice Age.  They were a source of food and artistic inspiration for ancient peoples who lived in Europe, Asia, and North America. But despite their size and ability to adapt to different habitats, these early cousins of the elephant eventually went extinct – leaving us an abundant fossil record.

Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age, an exploration of these fascinating creatures, premiers at Chicago’s Field Museum March 5 and runs through September 6, 2010, before embarking on a four-year tour of 10 venues in North America and overseas.  The exhibition is geared for all ages and is an experience the whole family will enjoy.

Star of the exhibition is a 40,000-year-old, intact baby mammoth specimen named Lyuba (pronounced Lee-OO-bah) that a Siberian reindeer herder and two of his sons discovered in 2007. Lyuba is, by far, the best-preserved specimen of her kind.

The exhibition, developed by The Field Museum, marks the first display of the baby mammoth in the United States, and includes not only Lyuba’s preserved body, but CT scans and other scientific evidence that confirms existing theories about her species and new insights. (Please see separate piece, More About Lyuba, for additional information.)

The 7,500-square-foot exhibition brings to life how these animals lived and their interactions with one another and with ancient humans. Mammoths and mastodons have long been popular at The Field. The Ancient Americas permanent exhibition displays spear points used by early hunters to bring down these huge beasts. The Museum’s permanent Evolving Planet exhibition features fossil skeletons and teeth of a mammoth and a mastodon, as well as large paintings by artist Charles Knight that show mammoths trudging through an ancient, snowy landscape and mastodons grazing in a grassy swamp.

Mammoths and Mastodons gives Museum visitors an opportunity to delve deeper into this Ice Age world. The exhibition shows environments that awe and amaze through large-scale projections, walk-through dioramas, and virtual experiences. Mammoths and Mastodons features large, fleshed-out creatures and skeletons that visitors can touch and examine up close. Also showcased are rare and evocative objects including some of the oldest art in existence, huge skulls and tusks, weird and wonderful mammoth relatives – including dwarf mammoths – and mastodon bones collected by William Clark (of Lewis and Clark) for President Thomas Jefferson’s own collection.  It also details the scientific methods used to study beasts from the past as well as their surviving relatives: modern-day elephants.  
 
Museum visitors will discover answers to many questions, such as how these creatures balanced their heavy tusks, how much a mammoth ate in a day, and how elephants “talk” to each other.

Mammoths and Mastodons explores not only how these Ice Age creatures lived, forming herds similar in social structure to those of modern elephants, but also how they died and became extinct. It looks at the roles played by climate change, human predation, and other factors in their demise. 

“These are concrete examples of the extinction process that threatens animals that we know today – animals we would hate to lose,” says Daniel C. Fisher, PhD, lead curator of the exhibition and professor of geological sciences at the University of Michigan. He is also a member of the International Mammoth Committee that supervises scientific studies of Lyuba.

     “Mammoths and Mastodons, with Lyuba at its center, makes natural history much more real to people. There’s a visceral awe that takes hold of you in looking at a specimen like Lyuba, and the exhibition as a whole demonstrates how close we can come to knowing what these animals were like,” Dr. Fisher adds.

Additional curatorial support for the exhibition comes from Bill Simpson, collections manager of The Field Museum’s world-renowned fossil vertebrates collection. 

“The Ice Age world was, geologically, just a moment ago. Here in Chicago, we are living on deposits sculpted and left behind by glaciers. These deposits contain buried fossils of a fascinating array of extinct animals. Our new exhibition will take visitors back to that world,” explains Simpson. 

Admission
Tickets to Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age includes basic admission to The Field  Museum and are priced at $23 for adults, $20 for seniors and students with ID, and $13 for children 3-11. Discounts are available for Chicago residents. Visit www.fieldmuseum.org or call 866.FIELD.03.  Special rates are available for tour operators and groups of 15 or more. Call our Group Sales office toll-free at 888.FIELD.85 (888.343.5385).

Location and Travel Information
The Field Museum is located at 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, on CTA bus lines #6 and #146, and close to the Metra electric and South Shore train lines. An indoor parking garage is located just steps from the main entrance. For more travel information, call the Illinois Department of Transportation, 312.368.4636, or the RTA Travel Center Hotline, 312.836.7000.

More About Lyuba
The 40,000-Year-Old Preserved Baby Mammoth
Is Highlight of Mammoths and Mastodons Exhibition

In 2007, a Siberian reindeer herder and two of his sons made a fantastic discovery – an intact baby woolly mammoth, preserved in the frozen soil of the Arctic for some 40,000 years. The baby mammoth was named Lyuba (pronounced Lee-OO-bah) after the herder’s wife.  This incredible specimen is now the centerpiece of The Field Museum’s new exhibition Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age. Lyuba’s discovery made headlines around the world, and this exhibition marks her first showing in the United States.

Lyuba is preserved in remarkable condition, giving researchers rare insights into the lives and habits of her extinct species. After Lyuba was found, an international team of Russian, French, Japanese, and American scientists performed DNA analysis, an autopsy, and used computerized X-ray tomography and microsampling techniques to explore her anatomy and physiology. Previously, the researchers had worked together for more than a decade examining fossils, tusks, and other frozen mammoth carcasses found in Siberia. But Lyuba was by far the best-preserved specimen they had ever seen.

The scientists retraced Lyuba’s short life and determined that she was only about 30 days old when she died of suffocation after being trapped in mud along the banks of a river. While she struggled to free herself, her trunk filled with silt and her body was quickly covered by sediment. Samples of Lyuba’s soft tissue and tusks suggest she was healthy at the time of her death.

One of the most puzzling questions about Lyuba was how she remained so well preserved, even though she lay exposed almost a year before discovery. Why didn’t her flesh rot during this last year? The scientific team’s American member, Daniel Fisher, PhD, a University of Michigan paleontologist and curator of Mammoths and Mastodons, provided the answer based upon his own research. Dr. Fisher found that Lyuba had been preserved by lactic-acid-producing bacteria that colonized her body after death. This microbial process “pickled” her soft tissues and worked, along with freezing, to keep Lyuba’s carcass – approximately 110 pounds and 45 inches long – in excellent condition.

To prepare Lyuba for The Field Museum’s exhibition, Russian scientists will preserve her body using formalin, a chemical that will make her tissue less susceptible to decay and allow Lyuba to be displayed without refrigeration. Before that happens, scientists will first perform an MRI and collect additional tissue samples for future study.

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Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age Public Programs at The Field Museum

National Geographic Live! Presents Waking the Baby Mammoth with Dan Fisher, Paleontologist

In May 2007, a Siberian reindeer herder and two of his sons discovered Lyuba: the almost perfectly preserved body of a baby mammoth that had been protected by permafrost for some 40,000 years.  One of the first scientists invited to study this invaluable find was Dan Fisher, a University of Michigan paleontologist who has spent almost 30 years studying the giant mammals of the Ice Age.  The opportunity was life-changing for Fisher as he recalls, “Suddenly, what I’d been struggling to visualize for so long was lying right there for me to touch.”  Complementing The Field Museum’s exhibition Mammoths and Mastodons, Fisher will tell the story of Lyuba’s life and times. 

Tuesday, March 9, 2010; 7:30pm
Single event tickets: $22-24 per person
Call 312.665.7400 or visit nglive.org to purchase tickets.

Spring 2010 Spring Leakey Foundation Lecture Collaboration:  Paleolithic Cave Art

Join the The Field Museum and The Leakey Foundation for a presentation by prominent French prehistorian Jean Clottes. Dr. Clottes, a Leakey Foundation grantee, took a leading role in the study of two of the most famous prehistoric painted caves discovered to date: the underwater Cosquer cave, discovered in 1985 in cliffs at the shore near Marseille; and the spectacular Chauvet Cave, discovered in 1991. Clottes will explain the complexities of the subject, his experience and knowledge gained from viewing cave paintings around the world.

Saturday, April 10, 2010; 1:00pm
Free with Basic admission.

Summer Worlds Tour 2010
Summer Worlds Tour is a week-long summer program for children ages 5-10. Campers will explore worlds beyond our blue skies at the Adler Planetarium, dive deep into the mysteries of the ocean at the Shedd Aquarium, and discover a time where mammoths and mastodons walked the Earth at The Field Museum.  During this program campers will explore exhibitions, create original art projects, play learning games and have lunch along the shores of Lake Michigan.
 
Select one of the following five one-week sessions:
July 5-9, July 12-16, July 19-23, and July 26-30           
All sessions take place from 9am to 3pm.
$285, $255 members

Registration for this camp is through the Adler Planetarium. Please visit their website, adlerplanetarium.org, starting February 2010.

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The Field Museum’s Mammoths and Mastodons Tours Worldwide

After its debut at The Field Museum, Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age will embark on a 10-city tour including plans for two international venues.  All aspects of the tour will be managed by The Field Museum’s Traveling Exhibitions department.

    “Years prior to the exhibition opening here at The Field Museum, we received many calls about Mammoths and Mastodons from museums all over the world,” says Whitney Owens, The Field Museum’s Traveling Exhibitions Director.  “Our exhibition has been highly anticipated, as well as popular, with our museum partners.” 

The hosting venues were given the opportunity to weigh in on the exhibition’s development, including design and content.  “Ultimately, The Field makes any exhibition stronger by incorporating comments and ideas from hosting institutions along the tour,” Owens adds.

Mammoths and Mastodons joins a well-rounded group of scientific and cultural exhibitions that The Field Museum has been touring for a decade.  In total, Traveling Exhibitions has toured 15 exhibitions around North America, Asia, New Zealand, South America, and the Middle East.  Laura Sadler, Field Museum Senior Vice President of Museum Enterprises, says, “We are the only Chicago cultural institution venturing into the marketplace with large traveling exhibitions that feature extensive tour schedules.  The quality of these exhibitions is unsurpassed.”
The Field Museum’s Traveling Exhibitions program, created in 2000, brings The Field Museum’s educational mission and award-winning exhibition expertise to museums around the globe.  Some of the exhibitions currently on tour include: Nature Unleashed: Inside Natural Disasters, George Washington Carver, and Chocolate.

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