Image: Archie the mammoth

Description: Mammuthus imperator maibeni (Barbour, 1925) - imperial mammoth skeleton from the Pleistocene of Nebraska, USA. (public display, Nebraska State Museum of Natural History, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA) Also known as Mammuthus columbi. From museum signage: Mammuthus columbia or Mammuthus imperator maibeni Imperial Mammoth 30,000 years old This skeleton lays claim to fame as being the largest mounted mammoth in any American museum. These elegant giants were the largest mammals known to have walked the Great Plains. Mammoths are the Nebraska state fossil. Formerly known as Archidiskodon imperator maibeni. Originally, chickens found the bones of this uncommonly large mammoth! In 1922, a farmer and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. H.S. Karriger, noticed that their chickens persistently pecked at some limy material at the bottom of a small canyon on their farm in Lincoln County, Nebraska. The chickens ate some of the bones before anyone realized that the soft limy deposits were fossil bones of great size. Paleontologists, with the help of the Karrigers, carefully excavated the Ice Age bones. Paleontologists assembled these bones in the old state museum in 1925. The mount was completed in 1933. Classification: Animalia, Chordata, Vertebrata, Mammalia, Placentalia, Proboscidea, Elephantidae Locality: Karriger Farm, Lincoln County, western Nebraska, USA See info. at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_mammoth
Title: Archie the mammoth
Credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/32850429344/
Author: James St. John
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
License: CC BY 2.0
License Link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0
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