Moorpark mammoth may migrate to Santa Barbara
By Sylvie Belmond belmond@theacorn.com
If city officials approve the plan later this month, the Moorpark mammoth fossils wilhave a new home at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History.

The bones were unearthed at a construction site in the Moorpark Highlands in the spring of 2005. The remarkably wellpreserved remnants belong to an 850,000-year-old mammoth.

The bone collection includes about 75 percent of the Ice Age creature, including most of both tusks. The mammoth is currently stored at the Paleo Environmental Associates warehouse lab in Santa Ana, in Orange County, said Assistant City Manager Hugh Riley, who's been working for months on finding a nearby permanent home for the mammoth.

If the council supports the idea, the ancient bones will be donated to the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History without conditions.

Once the donation is approved, Riley said, he hopes a joint effort will be made among the museum, the Moorpark community and local businesses to raise funds to erect a standing skeleton of the 12foottall prehistoric beast so that it can be exhibited in the museum.

"We're very interested. It seems extremely appropriate for us and we are very serious about this," said Karl Hutterer, executive director of the museum, which was established 91 years ago.

The museum's purpose is to help people understand the land they live on and to study and interpret the natural heritage of this region, according to Hutterer.

"The Moorpark mammoth is part of it so, it fits perfectly into the museum's mission," he said.

It will take a great deal of work to ready the mammoth for exhibit, the director said. The bones must be taken out of the rock matrix in which they were found and then they have to be consolidated and strengthened, Hutterer explained.

And although many pieces were found on site, major elements of the mammoth must be reconstructed to complete the animal.

The construction of the skeleton may take place in a public setting.

"The current plan is to set up a station in the paleontology hall where we'll do the preparation work right there, so people can see what is going on," Hutterer said.

Once all the bones are prepared or re-created, the animal has to be mounted on a steel frame, known as an armature. The frame holds the mammoth together but it's not visible from the outside, said Hutterer.

The mammoth will be placed in a lifelike pose to reflect the size and strength of the animals that lived here during the Ice Age. It will be exhibited next to the fossils of a pygmy mammoth found on Santa Rosa Island, but it is rarer and older than that mammoth, said Hutterer.

When the Moorpark mammoth was alive, the region was lush with trees and home to many other animals like saber-toothed tigers, camels and horses, Hutterer said. Horses became extinct on this continent until they were reintroduced by Europeans, he said.

Riley and the museum plan to work together for the long term to provide educational materials to the public and local schools about the mammoth and other related museum items.

If funding permits, the museum may help with a small display in Moorpark, said Hutterer.

In the meantime, Riley has been showing off replicas of the mammoth bones at public events around Moorpark.

A website created by Animal Makers of Simi Valley Inc., at www.moorparkmammoth.org., is dedicated to the ancient beast.