For Immediate Release Contact: Field Museum PR Department (312) 665-7100, media@fieldmuseum.org Exhibition Walk Through 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. (See separate piece More About Lyuba for additional information.) Continue >>