Mammoth Day
A Family Event
October 4, 2008
10 am - 4 pm
WOOLY MAMMOTHS RETURN TO
Children’s Event at the Museum
It’s true! On Saturday, October 4, Whidbey Island’s Woolly Mammoths will come “home” for a day of fun-filled activities for children at the Island County Historical Society’s Museum in Coupeville. The mammoths will reign supreme at the museum from 10am – 4pm. This event is free with admission to the museum and is appropriate for children of all ages.
By digging for and identifying different characteristics of real mammoth bones, your child will become a real certified amateur paleontologist! In addition, each child will be able to participate in hands-on fun activities, including making and using “prehistoric” musical instruments for a Caveman Band. A scavenger hunt in the museum and on its grounds is tons of fun and along the way, they’ll learn even more facts about mammoth life. Dale Conklin, an island paleontologist will be on hand to answer questions and show off the museum’s collection of mammoth artifacts, the largest such collection in the Puget Sound. Face painting and puppet making will round out the day.
For more information about Mammoth Day at the museum, call 360.678.3310.
Free with admission to the museum
The bones in our collection
belong to WOOLLY MAMMOTHS who
roamed Whidbey Island some 17,000 years ago.
They represent more than one animal according to the experts who were consulted by amateur paleontologist Dale Conklin of South Whidbey who amassed this collection over the last 20+++ years. An adult mammoth stood 12 feet high at the shoulder and was part of the animal life that proliferated during the Ice Age.
The fact that the bones have been broken into
more or less uniform sizes and come from a variety of animals, has suggested to
Dale Conklin and the professionals that Dale has found a "Mammoth graveyard"
with "many pieces of bones belonging to different size and ages of MAMMOTHS."
The bones also show "green breaks" made after the animal died, but before the
meat had rotted.
All these clues lead Dale to speculate that a herd may have been chased over a bluff to fall to their deaths below. Another find re-enforces his belief that pre-historic hunters may have preyed on the MAMMOTHS. Included in the display is a stone scraper he found with the bones at the South Whidbey site. When he cleaned the stone, he found two finger-grip channels and three carefully chipped cutting surfaces
The animals, like those at a well-known "buffalo jump" site in Montana, were probably butchered where they lay. Some of the bones Dale has collected show marking of the butchering process.
Dale moved to the Island many years ago and became a self-taught bone hunter. A chance encounter with another beach walker who showed him an ancient bone, later identified as WOOLLY MAMMOTH, lead to Dale's collection. For nearly 22 years he has prowled a section of the beach near his home at low tide. He has narrowed down his search area to about 150 square yards that he scrutinizes literally inch by inch. He has studied with professors from local colleges, consulted experts from the La Brea Tar Pits in California and has brought paleontologists to the island to confirm his finds.
There is probably no animal more widely acknowledged as symbolizing the prehistoric North than the woolly mammoth.
Woolly mammoths roamed the northern plains for most of the last 2 million years or so, until just 10,000 years ago. A subject of controversy for many years, it is generally agreed now that mammoths died out from a combination of changing climate, hunting pressure from humans, and probably disease.
Woolly Mammoths were large elephants that lived from about 120,000 to 4,000 years ago, during the last Ice Age. Cave paintings of the Woolly Mammoth have been found in France and Spain. Woolly Mammoths are closely related to the Indian Elephant.