Mahaska Mammoth Bones To Be Part Of Learning Center

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Mahaska Mammoth will call Mahaska County its permanent home, and won’t be migrating off to a museum in some metropolitan area anytime in the foreseeable future.

Dave Sedivec, Executive Director at Mahaska County Conservation Board, said that funds became available through a local grant to purchase the mammoth bones, and any other mammoth bones dug up through 2015. The bones will now be the property of the Mahaska County Conservation Board.

“My staff and I, we know a little bit about mammoths, but we’re definitely not mammoth experts. The experts technically couldn’t help work on the project because the bones, they were private property and not part of the public trust. So we were trying to come up with a way to get the bones into the public trust to allow the experts to be able to work on it.”

Sedivec received a call from the county attorney, “and there was a grant opportunity from a trust fund.” The grant was to help benefit the local community from the W.L. McQuiston Community Trust. Sedivec helped Mahaska County Attorney Charles Stream with some of the needed information for the grant, and Stream then wrote the proposal. “It’s been a huge team effort getting all of this together,” said Sedivec.

Because of the confidentiality agreement, neither the amount paid for the bones, nor the landowners identity are to be disclosed. Along with that, the location of the dig is to remain confidential yet as well. This is done to help protect the farmer, and also the site from being damaged. The ability to keep the amount and farmer identity a secret was accomplished by utilizing the private status of the Friends of Mahaska County Conservation as a facilitator in the acquisition. They wrote the check, in turn transferring the property to the Mahaska County Conservation Board.

Many of the experts that have been working at the dig site have done so on a volunteer basis because the bones weren’t part of the public trust. “Now they actually kick it into their departments,” said Sedivec.

Sedivec said that no tax dollars were used in acquiring the bones.

With the procurement of the bones into the public trust, the professionals at public institutions can now start helping the project.

This will give the residents of Mahaska County access to the relics, as part of the larger learning center project that is currently being planned, with fundraising currently underway for the nearly 3 million dollar project.

“It’ll be a regional draw,” said Sedivec. The site already draws experts from all around the Midwest because of the uniqueness of the site.

The search will expand this summer to also look into the possibility that the site hosted prehistoric human civilization. An archeological dig is planned for this May to search for the possibility the site did have human influence.