Purdue Fort Wayne brought mastodon bones discovered in Angola 50 years ago back to campus and set up a permanent exhibit in the Walb Student Union.
What is the difference between a mastodon and a mammoth?
- Time. Mastodons first appeared about 27 to 30 million years ago, while mammoths first appeared about 5 million years ago.
- Diet. Mammoths, like modern elephants, had serrated teeth that allowed them to grind things like grass. Mastodons had sharper teeth designed for crushing, which scientists say suggests they were likely foliage-eaters, eating shrubs, trees and foliage.
- Build. While mammoths had long legs and were rather lanky, mastodons were smaller and stockier.
- ancestors. Mastodons are so different from all elephants living today that they are considered completely extinct. Mammoths belong to the elephant family.
Donna, as she is called, was discovered on a farm south of Angola in 1968. The bones remained on campus in one form or another until they were sent to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor for study in 2016.
Now it sits in a custom-made glass case on one of the walls in the Walb Student Union, where students, teachers and visitors can walk by every day.
Geology professor James Farlow said the discovery of the mastodon came around the same time the geology department was founded and that it was a unique find because it was not alone in its bog.
“The skull of a much smaller specimen was found, so we are speculating, but we don’t know if it could have been a calf,” he said.
Donna’s original name was Don. During her time at the University of Michigan, it was discovered that Donna was female. She had given birth to a child and was about 20 years old when she died. The calf skull they found is named Edgar, but the exact gender is unknown.
In 1969, a year after Donna’s discovery, PFW students voted to make the mastodon the school’s mascot.
In a 1968 letter to the school newspaper, the Communicator, student council president Steve Pettyjohn advocated making the mastodon the school’s mascot: “Let us have the courage to be a little different.”
The bronze mastodon
Outside the Walb Student Union, in the center of campus, stands a two-thirds-size bronze statue of a mastodon. It was installed to celebrate the university’s 40th anniversary in 2004. Farlow also helped create this model.
Farlow said he traveled around the country measuring mastodon skeletons to get an idea of their proportions.
“I looked at modern elephants to look at details of the skin, the eyes, the ears, all of those things,” Farlow said. “I talked to zookeepers and so on.”
To create the lifelike statue, he worked with the same company that installed the skeleton in the student dorm, Research Castings International.
3D modeling
To get a closer look at the skull of the young mastodont Edgar, a digital 3D model will soon be available on the Helmke Library website at Purdue Fort Wayne.
Using a high-end portable 3D scanner available at the library, library staff scanned the fossil so that it will be available online and eventually in print.
Erika Mann, director of library technology and digital initiatives, said they would ultimately try to have Donna’s entire skeleton scanned.
“We know that most of the bones were scanned when this happened in Michigan, but some ribs were not scanned,” Mann said. “So maybe we could do that so they can 3D print a replica of the skeleton.”
Pending pachyderm legislation
Earlier this month, a bill officially declaring the mastodon a national fossil passed the Senate unanimously and will now move on to the House of Representatives. The bill was co-sponsored by Senator Mike Braun and Senator Gary Peters (D-MI).
The law, called the National Fossil Act, is intended to highlight the importance of the mastodon to American natural history and to honor discoveries of this species across the country.
The bill still has to pass the House of Representatives.
