Impressive Skeleton of a Mammoth at the American Museum of Natural History
I was a bit dismayed by the section which focused on human culture at the American Museum of Natural History. I wasn’t really my interest but I quickly passed through it in the hope of seeing something more interesting. I head to the top floor and I was bracing myself for another disappointment since it was the last floor. However, my eye grew wide with amazement as I laid my eyes on what is probably their prized collection of the museum. This is the Hall of Advanced Mammals. It is not talking about existing mammals but mammals which have already gone extinct. A little bit of history here, after the dinosaurs died off, the mammals had the whole world to themselves. And they grew large, very large.
I Think This was Another Extinct Elephant Skeleton
The mammals effectively took over from the dinosaurs when it came to size. While only a few of them grew to dinosaur like sizes, these mammals were much larger than the ones we are familiar with. One of the most impressive ones here on display as a fossil of a mammoth. The mammoth skeleton was almost complete and it is posed very impressively. There is a small statue of a current day elephant for comparison but I think that one was misleading since it would imply that the mammoth was much larger than the modern day elephant. There were numerous other fossils on display here unfortunately, not too many of the large mammals ever made it to dinosaur-like stardom, except perhaps the saber tooth tiger. A lot of these fossils I have seen in books before and it is amazing to be seeing the fossils “in the flesh”.
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