When Mike Smith arrived at the Indiana State Museum before the new building opened in 2002, he had no idea just how extensive his skill at exhibit design would become. In addition to his museum work, Smith held studio space at the Stutz Building for nearly 10 years as an abstract steel sculptor. Turns out, his background in fine arts was to be put to the test!
Today, Mike Smith is one of an elite group of people in the world to have mounted the real-bone skeleton of a three-ton mastodon; a real Ice Age giant. His background in welding and steelwork was the perfect combination to take on the project of mounting the 292 bones that make up this mammal.
Prior to Smith’s arrival at the museum, huge bones were discovered in the muck of a peat farm in northern Indiana. It was 1998 and, once the Buesching family realized what they had, the mastodon bones were carefully removed by a team from Indiana University-Purdue University Ft. Wayne, and eventually brought to the Indiana State Museum. Incredibly, more than 80 percent of the skeleton was recovered. A radiocarbon date showed the mastodon, named “Fred” in honor of the senior Buesching, to be 13,020 to 13,760 years old.
Ron Richards, the museum’s Chief Curator for Science and Technology is excited about the mastodon, and is finally able to recover from what he refers to as “separation anxiety” following the 1933 loss of a major find.
Richards explained how then-curator Vern Patty responded to a ‘mastodon call’ in northern Indiana. The skeleton was excavated and brought back to the museum, but then the owner contested rights to it, took the matter to court and won, eventually selling the Indiana mastodon to the Denver Science Museum, where it still resides.
“All these years of working in the field and we had nothing complete like this to show for it … until now,” said Richards.
Another issue museums often face, Richards says, is that key parts of a skeleton are often missing or in bad shape. The head, for example, can be broken by heavy equipment when it is initially found in a farmer’s field, etc. Then, when the mount is made, a museum might ‘borrow parts,’ turning mounts into a composite of several animals.
The Buesching mastodon is thus a prized specimen because more than 80 percent of it is real bone from a single beast, not casts like the majority of mounted specimens you see at many museums. Richards adds that Fred is a work of art, with gently curving steel supports and each bone of the spinal column mounted “like a gemstone.”
While it was decidedly less expensive to mount the mammal in-house at the Indiana State Museum, this was an unusual course of action, and dollars still had to be raised to pay for preservation and mounting. In response, museum leadership launched the creative “Buy-A-Bone” campaign allowing the public to sponsor individual bones or give them as gifts. In return, sponsors received an actual bone fragment from one of the museum’s many digs, and a certificate of authenticity from chief curator Richards. Support has come from a wide cross section. For example, one of the bones was sponsored by an elementary school “penny drive”; the assembly process received a financial boost from a grant by the LDI 100th Anniversary Celebration Cultural Partnership.
Now that Fred is complete and in place in the museum’s Nina Mason Pulliam gallery, the soft-spoken Smith is “mostly relieved,” he says, “and somewhat proud, but also thankful for the help from several staff members.” His family and friends are bragging about him on social media. And while Smith took a brief moment to bask in the glow of success, he quickly moved on to work on other museum exhibits.
Meanwhile, Fred stands proudly, awaiting the November opening of Indiana’s Ice Age Giants: The Mystery of Mammoths and Mastodons which explores how the Indiana State Museum has excavated more such burial sites than any other institution in the state. The bones reveal what the museum learned about their lives and their deaths in Indiana, some 13,000 years ago.
**For timed-release video of a portion of the mounting process, please visit our YouTube page:
Filed under: history, museums, science | Tagged: dig, Ice Age, indiana state museum, Mastodon | Leave a Comment »
“I never thought once in my life I’d be serving in the military, but there I was in the Union Army, ‘fresh fish’ as they called me. Standing there with my newly issued rifle we drilled, marching together to prep for battle. On such a beautiful day I don’t think any of us expected what was to come, but as we marched on, shots rang out! A Confederate ambush! Quickly we gathered and returned fire; splitting into two groups. As the main group kept the southern soldiers pinned, three others including myself pressed from the east, flanking the Confederates’ position. With minimal losses victory was quickly ours! I guess I didn’t realize just how dangerous working at the museum could be.” (Aaron Braithwaite)
“Like most days, I began my day began by photographing the soldiers practicing their morning drills. The troop had been drilling intensively for the past week in anticipation of a Confederate attack. During the morning of March 28, the captain caught wind of Confederate movement to the south, and sent three soldiers to scout the area. I grabbed my camera just in time to capture the scouting team face to face with Confederate soldiers. The three soldiers hurried back to the troop to warn them of the approaching danger. I heard the captain order his troops to fall into ranks and prepare for battle. As the soldiers marched forward, I was able to photograph the pride and hesitation in the new recruit’s faces. Suddenly, the Confederate soldiers fired! Although new and inexperienced, the recruits charged courageously forward to fight and protect the Union. The troop did lose a few good soldiers that day, but was able to stop the Confederates from advancing farther north. Although my day started as any other, it ended with me in the center of an ambush photographing a battle between the Union and Confederates.” (Katy Harvey)
