Workers move mastodon in Ohio Historical Center

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Museum visitors no longer will be greeted by a giant, 10,000-year-old skeletal rear end when they walk in. Instead, as a museum spokeswoman puts it, they’ll see “a little more majestic view.”

Workers on Saturday finished a three-day job of moving a roughly 1-ton mastodon skeleton several feet to a more flattering position at the Ohio Historical Center.

Kim Schuette, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Historical Society, which runs the museum, said visitors will get a side view of the huge elephantlike beast when they enter. The mastodon’s backside had been greeting museum-goers who came through a lower-level entry. That door later became the main entrance to provide better access for the disabled.

A crew of six to eight people began moving the mastodon Thursday by removing the front and hind legs from the 10-foot-tall skeleton, which is supported by a steel bracket. The head and tusks followed.

The museum’s senior curator of natural history, Bob Glotzhober, said the movers used a piece of equipment similar to a car jack to help hoist and rotate the mastodon’s midsection.

The mastodon is named Conway after Newton S. Conway, who unearthed it on a farm in western Ohio in 1887.

Horse-drawn carriages once carted the skeleton around to county fairs in Ohio.

The skeleton eventually was donated to Ohio State University, which loaned it to the Historical Society in 1970 when the Historical Center opened.

The last time the skeleton was moved was in 1993 for the opening of the center’s natural-history exhibit. Glotzhober said workers used eight photographs from that move to help scoot the animal bones.