There’s an open house in Oskaloosa later this month for the unveiling of a replica that will help tell the story of a massive animal that roamed the area 10-thousand years ago. A life-size model of a woolly mammoth is going on permanent display at the Environmental Learning Center in Oskaloosa. Chris Clingan is director of the Mahaska County Conservation Board, which operates the center.
.In 2010, after a heavy rain, a man who owned property about six miles east of Oskaloosa found the leg bone of a mammoth sticking out of a ravine.
Bones from three different mammoths were eventually discovered in the area.
Clingan remembers seeing a replica of a giant sloth at the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History when he was a kid and he says seeing this full-body replica of a woolly mammoth is equally awe inspiring.
The mammoth themed open house will be on June 27th, from 4 until 8 p.m. The Learning Center in Oskaloosa opened just a couple of years ago and the building was designed around getting a life sized woolly mammoth replica inside.