Hot Springs to host elephant congress

| Friday, September 16, 2005

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About 70 of the world's top authorities on elephants, mammoths and related animals are expected to attend the 2nd International World of Elephants Congress Thursday through Saturday, Sept. 22-24, in Hot Springs.

The first International World of Elephants Congress was held four years ago in Rome.

The conference, hosted by the Mammoth Site of Hot Springs and based at the Mueller Civic Center, will include sessions, presentations and workshops on new discoveries, updates, and new theories about elephants, mammoths, their ancestors and related animals, according to Dr. Larry Agenbroad, Mammoth Site director.

Participants will also be able to take field trips to a mammoth kill site in the Badlands and the Hudson-Meng Bison Kill Site in the Nebraska Panhandle.

The conference is open to the public.

Although there are fees for many of the sessions, workshops and the field trips, two free public lectures will be offered on Friday evening, one by Alexei Tikhonov of Russia on a woolly mammoth carcass found in Siberia and the other by Fyodor K. Shidlovskiy of Russia on the construction of a mammoth museum in Moscow.

Also free to the public will be poster presentations (information presented on posters placed on easels) all day Friday and Saturday at the Mueller Center Annex, Agenbroad said.

Agenbroad is co-author of a number of presentations. He also will have a poster presentation on the dentition of Columbian mammoths. He said studies of dental characteristics show, for example, that all of the mammoths found at the Hot Springs site were males and that most of the mammoths found at Rancho La Brea in California were females. Males usually had larger teeth and bones, Agenbroad explained.

It also indicates that the ancestors of the pygmy mammoths on the Channel Islands probably were Columbian mammoths that evolved into miniatures on the islands, Agenbroad said.

The conference also will provide updates on:

- The Yukagir mammoth found in northern Siberia. The mammoth's full skull and left front leg (with all of the flesh attached) is currently on exhibit in Japan.

- The miniature mammoths found on Wrangel Island north of Siberia. The Wrangel Reserve Mammoths lived as late as 3,700 years ago, Agenbroad said.

- A 5,700-year-old mammoth found on the island of St. Paul in the Pribilof Archipelago, 400 miles west of Alaska.

The field trip to the HudsonnMeng Bison Kill Site in Nebraska will take place on Thursday, Sept. 22. The trip to the Lange-Ferguson Mammoth Kill Site in the Badlands will be Sunday, Sept. 25.

For additional information about the conference, including a schedule of presentations and fees, call 745-6017.

For information or to register online, visit www.mammothsite.com.