So as you drive along the 60 Freeway in Los Angeles, CA headed for Riverside, CA, you see this elephant, no mastodon, NO... Woolly Mammoth on the north side of the freeway. It certainly got my curiosity up.
As it turns out, the mammoth is part of a display at the Jurupa Mountains Cultural Center, a educational non-profit organization that has a few dinosaur sculptures on display too. Ora liked it here a lot, I think.
No dinosaurs ever lived in these parts. The sculptures are just that... sculptures. Not bones, fossils, etc. However, as Mary Burns, Executive Director of the Center told me, there WERE woolly mammoths in the area. And, in fact, they have a mammoth's tusk in the back which they are working on. It is a fossil and they painstakingly pick the dirt away to reveal the tusk underneath. Below is Mary working with a dentist's pick and a close up of the revealed tusk.
The purpose of the site is to serve educational needs of kids. So, it turns out this isn't such an "odd" or "curious" site at all. They provide a place for kids to go on field trips etc. I saw "scouts" there as well. They are only "open" I guess on Saturday, so I was lucky. The Center is within a nursery and I neglected to figure that out. There is a center full of rocks, mineral & fossils as well.
Teacher, educators etc. should call the Center to arrange visits!!! Click
here to visit their website.
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