The Hyde Park mastodon, 13,000 + 20 years later

The Hyde Park Mastodon on display at PRI’s Museum of the Earth, Ithaca, New York.

The Hyde Park Mastodon on display at PRI’s Museum of the Earth, Ithaca, New York.

by Dr. Warren D. Allmon, Director

Last updated September 16, 2020


Twenty years ago this month, staff and volunteers from the Paleontological Research Institution were engaged in one of the most exciting and consequential scientific events most of us had ever experienced—excavating the skeleton of an American mastodon (Mammut americanum) from a pond in the village of Hyde Park, in the Hudson River Valley of New York.

Property owner Larry Lozier in front of the pond.

Property owner Larry Lozier in front of the pond.

The first bones had been found by an excavator, hired by the landowners, Larry and Sheryl Lozier, to deepen a pond next to their home. As Larry told the story, the excavator had done the work while they were away, and upon returning and walking around the site they found several large bones. Larry remembered that the largest bones he had ever seen were those of Clydesdale horses, and upon showing the huge brown bones to a neighbor who knew horses was told “Larry, that’s no Clydesdale”. An hour on the internet convinced Larry and Sheryl that the bones belonged to a mastodon, an extinct distant cousin of elephants whose fossil skeletal remains are not uncommon in New York State. Through friends who had a daughter taking my paleontology class at Cornell University, they were connected to me.

I received a call from Larry in the fall of 1999, right in the middle of another mastodon excavation. John Chiment, an instructor in Cornell’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was engaged in excavating a site in Chemung County, New York, about 40 miles from Ithaca, between Elmira and Watkins Glen. This site was producing a puzzling mix of bones that turned out to be from both mastodon and mammoth. Local, regional, and national media were involved. Hundreds of students and other volunteers were working at the site. Negotiations with the landowners were complex. PRI was collaborating with Chiment and Cornell’s administration to acquire the bones, which arrived at PRI in late December, where they were cleaned and preserved, and remain to this day, although still officially the property of Cornell.

The Loziers’ call was therefore intriguing, but came at a very busy time. It was not until a month or so later that my wife and I were able to visit Hyde Park to examine the bones. What we saw quickly suggested a significant find. There was a complete humerus and radius (upper and lower forelimb bones), as well as freshly broken fragments of tusk, pelvis, and skull. This was not just an isolated bone or two. We promised the Loziers we would be back.

In June 2000, a half-dozen PRI staff members went to Hyde Park. All we knew was that the bones had come out of what was now a pond measuring about 180 feet by 125 feet and about 6 feet deep in the middle. We pumped the pond down and began to do what paleontologists almost never do to find fossils—we began to randomly dig holes. For a long week in what turned out to be one of the rainiest Junes in New York in many years, we dug and dug, and found nothing. (The excavator hadn’t reported that he had found anything unusual nor provided any information about where in the pond the bones had come from; when Larry asked him why he wasn’t paying more attention, his reply was one of the most memorable lines of the project: “If I stopped working every time I found something interesting, I’d never get any work done.”) We finally gave up.

The PRI team a few minutes after discovering the location of the skeleton in the pond, August 21, 2000. Left to right: Pam Loughmiller, Warren Allmon, Elizabeth Humbert, Curt Banta, Jim Sherpa, Rob Ross, Paul Harnik, Pete Nester.

The PRI team a few minutes after discovering the location of the skeleton in the pond, August 21, 2000. Left to right: Pam Loughmiller, Warren Allmon, Elizabeth Humbert, Curt Banta, Jim Sherpa, Rob Ross, Paul Harnik, Pete Nester.

We still believed, however, that something important was there. So, we returned on August 21 for one more try. Again we pumped and dug, and—in one of those unforgettable moments—on what was to be our last day, at around 6:45 PM, Elizabeth Humbert, who had just started working at PRI that summer, found a large vertebra in a mound of mud in the center of the pond. Other bones were quickly located nearby, and we all experienced the thrill of knowing we had found the location of the skeleton.

A typical day “in the pit” removing mud matrix one handful at a time. Everyone was barefoot to avoid damaging the fossil bones.

A typical day “in the pit” removing mud matrix one handful at a time. Everyone was barefoot to avoid damaging the fossil bones.

The Discovery Channel video crew shooting activity “in the pit.”

The Discovery Channel video crew shooting activity “in the pit.”

The next eight weeks were consumed with an extraordinary rush of events. We now knew that there was a substantial part of a skeleton in the pond, but we did not know how much was there or exactly what it would take to get it out. One thing we did know is that we needed money. Over the summer we had had preliminary discussions with the Discovery Channel about the find. They had recently aired a much-talked-about documentary on excavating a woolly mammoth in Siberia, and we asked whether they might be interested in doing the same for a mastodon closer to home. We had left it that we would keep in touch if more bones were found. Once they were, Discovery took an impressive risk, committing to film our excavation as it happened, and providing some modest funding to support the work. With this pledge of involvement, PRI found several other individuals and foundations also willing to help. By the time the project was over, PRI had spent more than $250,000.

And we needed expertise. I am not a vertebrate paleontologist (although I was about to play one on TV). So, I contacted my colleague Dan Fisher at the University of Michigan, who is widely known as one of the world’s foremost experts on mastodons and mammoths. I told him that we had something that might be of interest, and I was overjoyed and grateful when he said he would be willing to check it out on his way back from a family vacation.

The Hyde Park Fire Department comes to the rescue on September 3, pumping out the pond after a heavy rainstorm.

The Hyde Park Fire Department comes to the rescue on September 3, pumping out the pond after a heavy rainstorm.

A few days later, we were back in Hyde Park in force and began to try to get a grip on the task before us. The first and largest obstacle was, and would remain throughout the project, water. From our work in June, we knew that it was impossible to work in the pond unless it was pumped empty. This had to happen daily, as the pond was fed by at least one significant spring. Lest we sink into the muck up to our waists, boardwalks had to be installed wherever walking was required. Engineering and construction therefore became major preoccupations for the duration. All of our work was done with the drone of pump motors in the background. Daily trips to Home Depot and equipment rental companies were punctuated by rainstorms and breakdowns. (After one especially heavy storm, the Hyde Park Fire Department brought in a pumper truck to help empty the pond, providing one of the more surreal but photogenic moments of the project.) The boardwalks evolved daily as more of the skeleton was uncovered, as the number of workers increased, and as our needs to inspect, photograph, document, and ultimately remove the bones changed and grew. Ultimately, we built the equivalent of a small frame building in the middle of Larry and Sheryl’s pond, complete with ramps, ladders, steps, and handrails. None of this would have been possible without PRI staff member Jim Sherpa, who had been a master carpenter in a previous career.

As word of the discovery spread around town, local media appeared. The Poughkeepsie Journal was particularly good at covering the story. Then one day a reporter for The New York Times arrived. After I gave her a thorough description of the project, she politely said “Dr. Allmon, I really appreciate you sharing all the science with me, but frankly this story is going to be in the Metro section” (apparently it was the fact that the mastodon was in the suburbs that was newsworthy). Nevertheless, it had quite an effect. Camera crews from both the NBC Nightly News and the Today Show were there the next day, and People magazine was not far behind. The discovery was featured in a photo book on America by ABC news anchor Peter Jennings.

The Loziers became local celebrities. On most days, dozens of people stopped by, sometimes on weekends more than a hundred, and we soon assigned a volunteer to crowd control, occasionally overseen by a curious officer from the Hyde Park Police Department. We tried to accommodate and educate visitors with tours, question-and-answer sheets, and signage that reported what was happening each day.

Volunteers were essential to the success of the excavation, and by the end of the project more than 300 people had contributed more than 2,500 hours of their time. The most coveted spots were “in the pit,” removing mud from around the bones. These positions were assigned only to volunteers we had carefully trained, because they had to know how to recognize bones and what to do when they found one. Volunteers did many other jobs as well, from construction and water management, to cataloging non-bone materials that we collected (wood, shells, etc.), to food and beverage service. College and high school students were a major part of the corps, with volunteers coming from Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Marist College, Mount Holyoke College, Vassar College, Dutchess Community College, and Our Lady of Lourdes High School (especially Mike D’Emic, who went on to become a successful dinosaur paleontologist at Adelphi University).

By the third week, it became clear that we had found an exceptionally complete and well-preserved skeleton. The backhoe that made the original discovery had cut through one of the tusks, and damaged the pelvis and nicked a couple of other bones, but the rest of the skeleton was pristine. A thrilling moment was the discovery of the other tusk which was complete and gorgeous. But where was the skull?

The answer came from a completely unexpected part of the pond. One of our volunteers was walking along the edge, more than 100 feet from the center of the pond where the skeleton lay. He called over a staff member who called over others. Shovels were applied, and we abruptly realized we were looking at the underside of the skull. The backhoe operator had—whether knowingly or not was never determined—moved the skull from its original location to the edge of the pond and covered it with mud. It was remarkable that it was so little damaged. The video crew from the Discovery Channel happened to be there that day, and captured the very moment of our realization for posterity.

The skull as it was found, upside-down, at the edge of the pond. The hole is the foramen magnum at the rear of the skull. The white molar teeth are facing upward.

The skull as it was found, upside-down, at the edge of the pond. The hole is the foramen magnum at the rear of the skull. The white molar teeth are facing upward.

The skull has been crated and is about to be moved from its accidental resting place at the edge of the pond.

The skull has been crated and is about to be moved from its accidental resting place at the edge of the pond.

Removal of the lower jaw from the pit.

Removal of the lower jaw from the pit.

Dan Fisher did indeed stop off on his way home from vacation, and he returned several times before the excavation was completed. We could never have done what we did without his patient and expert advice. Having participated in numerous other mastodon discoveries, he made many practical suggestions, including leaving every bone where we found it until we had them all, and then measuring recording the depth and precise location of each one before it was removed. He was eventually to play a central role in the study, casting, and reconstruction of the skeleton, delaying much of his other research for a couple of years to permit the kind of detailed examination and analysis for which he is well known. David Burney and Guy Robinson of Fordham University also provided valuable advice on water management of the site.

Warren Allmon (left) and Dan Fisher discuss strategy and tactics.

Warren Allmon (left) and Dan Fisher discuss strategy and tactics.

Dan Fisher examining the labeled bones just before final extraction began.

Dan Fisher examining the labeled bones just before final extraction began.

The entire pond was gridded and mapped, and most of it was searched by hand for any additional bones, but none were found. Our mastodon was apparently alone in the pond, its skeleton tidily clustered in the center. We nevertheless wanted to ensure that we did not leave behind any materials that could help us understand the history of this spot. We removed several logs, including one more than 20 feet long, that we found adjacent to the skeleton, and filled more than 800 buckets with mud from around the skeleton which we took back to PRI. We took several sediment cores from in and around the pond. A team from Cornell brought ground-penetrating radar to the site to search (unsuccessfully) for other bones that might be in the ground outside of the pond.

Aerial view of the skeleton in “the pit” in the middle of the pond. The undamaged tusk is at the lower right, the pelvis to the upper left. Image by Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics, copyright 2000.

Aerial view of the skeleton in “the pit” in the middle of the pond. The undamaged tusk is at the lower right, the pelvis to the upper left. Image by Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics, copyright 2000.

Some of the hundreds of buckets of peaty matrix collected from the pond. They were taken back to PRI, dried, and   shared with thousands of students and others.

Some of the hundreds of buckets of peaty matrix collected from the pond. They were taken back to PRI, dried, and shared with thousands of students and others.

Panorama of the Lozier pond in its pumped-down condition in the final phase of the excavation. Image by Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics, copyright 2000.

Panorama of the Lozier pond in its pumped-down condition in the final phase of the excavation. Image by Cornell University Program of Computer Graphics, copyright 2000.

When we were satisfied that we had found everything that was there, and had mapped and tagged and charted and photographed every bone, we began to remove them from the pit into the Loziers’ garage, where they were kept moist (to prevent their drying too quickly and cracking). The complete tusk was a special challenge and had to be crated in place and carried out by six people. Sheryl Lozier had the honor of removing the last bone on September 17, an event also captured by the Discovery Channel’s cameras.

Jim Sherpa and the intact tusk, which is basically stained ivory.

Jim Sherpa and the intact tusk, which is basically stained ivory.

Jim Sherpa hands the final bone to Sheryl Lozier to carry out of the pond on September 17, 2000, as a Discovery Channel cameraman records the event.

Jim Sherpa hands the final bone to Sheryl Lozier to carry out of the pond on September 17, 2000, as a Discovery Channel cameraman records the event.

The cleaned skeleton of the Hyde Park mastodon laid out at PRI in early 2001.

The cleaned skeleton of the Hyde Park mastodon laid out at PRI in early 2001.

The bones and everything else came to PRI in Ithaca, where we began the process of cleaning, studying, and mounting the skeleton. (As soon as it had become clear that we had an essentially complete skeleton, it immediately became a centerpiece exhibit in the plans for the Museum of the Earth, on which we were about to start construction.)

The bones were dried slowly over several weeks. The complete tusk was dried over several months and then treated with 10 coats of preservative to keep it from cracking. The entire skeleton was crated and shipped to the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, where—under Dan Fisher’s supervision—molds were made of every bone. It was then re-crated and sent to a museum exhibit firm in Calgary, Alberta, which crafted a steel frame that would support it on display. It was then crated again and shipped to Ithaca, where the crew from Calgary mounted it in the new Museum (supported generously by Peter Stifel and other donors).

Jim Sherpa in the casting lab at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, working on the molds.

Jim Sherpa in the casting lab at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, working on the molds.

Mounting of the skeleton in the new Museum of the Earth.

Mounting of the skeleton in the new Museum of the Earth.

The completed mount and exhibit in the Museum.

The completed mount and exhibit in the Museum.

The Michigan molds were used to make casts of the skeleton, and several complete casts grace the collections of other institutions. (You can have your own for $60,000.) One of these fulfilled a pledge we had made to the Loziers: it stands today in the Mid-Hudson Children’s Museum in Poughkeepsie, through the generous financial support of the Dyson Foundation.

A youngster sorts through a sample of “mastodon matrix.”

A youngster sorts through a sample of “mastodon matrix.”

Those buckets of mud provided the raw material for The Mastodon Matrix Project, which mailed out 1-kilogram bags of dried mud to anyone who asked for it, with educational materials describing the mastodon excavation and how the associated matrix might contain valuable pieces of the scientific puzzle of understanding its ancient environment. We asked the recipients to return to us anything of interest that was found. Over the next 15 years, a total of 2000 bags were sent to most states and four foreign countries, and were examined by an estimated 50,000 people, including students from kindergarten to college, retirees, scout troops, prisoners, and nuns. We received sorted materials from about 400 of these bags, and these specimens are now part of the PRI specimen collection. The results of this citizen science project formed the basis for several scientific papers reconstructing the world of our mastodon.

The Discovery Channel produced its documentary, Mastodon in Your Backyard, which was previewed in a special showing at Cornell in September 2001. It unfortunately premiered on television the night that the U.S. attacked Afghanistan, which diminished the initial buzz, but it nevertheless had a long afterlife, including on transatlantic flights and rerun showings around the world. Segments are still part of the mastodon exhibit in the Museum of the Earth.

The mastodon became famous in other ways. In 2005, an image of the animal as it may have appeared alive in a snowstorm was developed by Uhaul International Corp. to represent New York State on more than 6,000 of its rental trucks across the country. Look for one on an interstate near you.

A 24-foot Uhaul truck with the Hyde Park mastodon graphic on it.

A 24-foot Uhaul truck with the Hyde Park mastodon graphic on it.

Publicity around the Hyde Park find led PRI to one more mastodon excavation, in 2001, in the town of North Java in Wyoming County near Buffalo. This was a very different kind of find—a very incomplete skeleton that had been completely removed by yet another pond-deepening project and spread over multiple spoil piles. The collection process involved weeks of labor-intensive sieving of hundreds of tons of sediment. The result was about 25% of the skeleton of a female mastodon that had been subjected to considerable scavenging.

With the North Java project, we had three very different mastodon occurrences from across New York State. We were eager to know everything possible about these discoveries, so we could tell the public about them. To get that information, we decided to mount a multi-disciplinary research effort, distributing materials to experts across the country and assembling the results in a publication. The finished product was a 475-page issue of one of PRI’s own technical journals with the inelegant but descriptive title Mastodon paleobiology, taphonomy, and paleoenvironment in the Late Pleistocene of New York State: Studies on the Hyde Park, Chemung, and North Java sites (published with generous support from Bill Perks). Forty authors contributed scientific papers on topics ranging from the glacial geology of the sites to their paleoenvironments as revealed in tree rings, insects, and mollusk shells. Dan Fisher contributed almost 150 pages of explication of the age and growth of our mastodons. The volume is a major milestone of scholarship on mastodons in the northeastern U.S.

All that research revealed much about the life and world of the Hyde Park mastodon. The skeleton turns out to be one of the most complete and well-preserved specimens of an American mastodon ever found, missing only a few small bones of the tail, sternum, and right forefoot. He—for comparison of tusk size with modern elephants pointed to it being a male—died approximately 13,000 years ago, probably in the spring or summer of his 36th year (based on analysis of growth rings in his tusks). (Note: The skeleton was radiocarbon dated at 11,480 14C years before present. Converting this to calendar years before present is complicated, but a reasonable estimate is around 13,000 years ago.) His death may have been caused or hastened by one or more wounds received during mating battles with other males. He ate a lot of spruce, which was abundant in the environment in which he lived. That environment was cooler than at present in the mid-Hudson Valley, more like northern Quebec today. The peat bog in which he was finally entombed was also home to ostracods, clams, snails, and many species of plants and fungi.

The Hyde Park mastodon was a huge accomplishment for PRI—in science, education, and as a permanent exhibit—made possible by the generosity and hard work of many people, and it continues to teach and inspire two decades later. Today, more than 30,000 visitors each year look at the mastodon skeleton in the Museum of the Earth, and are brought closer to the reality of the dramatic changes that have taken place in the spot where they are standing over just the past few thousand years. New York was once roamed by herds of elephants, which became extinct abruptly around 10,000 years ago at a time of changing climate and growing human impact. It is a messenger from a not-so-distant but very different past, an icon of the Ice Age that speaks to us about our present and our future.

Past and present PRI staff members who worked on the Hyde Park mastodon project:

Sarah Bong

Carlyn Buckler

Paul Harnik

Jennifer Hodgson

Elizabeth Humbert

David Kim

Paul Krohn

Peter Nester

Bridget Rigas

Rob Ross

Jim Sherpa

Sources of more information

Allmon, W.D., and P. Nester, editors, 2008, Mastodon paleobiology, taphonomy, and paleoenvironment in the Late Pleistocene of New York State: Studies on the Hyde Park, Chemung, and North Java sites. Palaeontographica Americana, 61, 475 p.

Fisher, D.C., 2018, Paleobiology of Pleistocene proboscideans. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Science, 46: 229–260.

Jennings, P., and T. Brewster, 2002, In search of America. Hyperion, New York, 309 p.

Ross, R.M., P.G. Harnik, W.D. Allmon, J.M. Sherpa, A. Goldman, P.L. Nester, and J.J. Chiment, 2003, The Mastodon Matrix Project as an experiment with large-scale public collaboration in paleontological research. Journal of Geoscience Education, 51(1): 39-47.