Purdue University Fort Wayne permanently displays mastodon skeleton at student union
After a 44 year journey, a mastodon skeleton has finally come to rest in a display at Purdue University Fort Wayne’s student union thanks to generations of geology students.
The year was 1980. Jon Havens had been attending Purdue University Fort Wayne for two years and had just decided on majoring in geology. Havens had no idea that this decision would impact his school in such an important way. His decision impacted his friend Dan Brinkman as well as Mike Stoller who graduated from Purdue in 2018 and Whitney Hadley-Salay who graduated last year. All of these people have their efforts displayed prominently on campus in a way that will be shared by generations.
The four students mentioned above, as well as dozens more, all helped to preserve and showcase the original mastodon bones which give the university its nickname. Recently, a display of those bones was mounted in the hallway that leads into the International Ballroom by the new Herd Hideout located in the Walb Student Union.
Between 1984 and 2016, the bones rested in Kettler Hall until a renovation caused them to need to be moved. Since then, there has been a campaign behind the scenes at the school to build another public display for the bones. Professor of geology Ben Dattilo and assistant professor of biology Scott Bergeson have been the caretaker of the bones in the interim.
In the 2022-2023 academic season, the leaders of the Student Government Association approved a budget of $200,000 in capital funding to help create a new public display. Another $20,000 was donated to the project from The Purdue Fort Wayne Foundation.
The mastodon bones were uncovered at a Steuben County farm back in 1968 and were delivered to Purdue University Fort Wayne under the leadership of Jack Sunderman. Sunderman was the original founder of Purdue’s Department of Geology, starting it three years prior. Once at the university, the bones rested on metal shelves in a classroom and laboratory in Kettler, and were available for student study. Jon Havens was inspired by the story of Sunderman and his team finding and recovering the skeleton from the peat bog on the farm.
Havens and Brinkman, who were geology students at the time, had talked about displaying the mastodon bones. It was Brinkman who brought up the idea that the bones could appear as an entire skeleton, but only around 65% of the skeleton had been unearthed, and a full reconstruction would have been too costly.
Havens was excited by the idea, however, and went on to build a balsa wood model of how the skeleton might look if laid down flat. He also went searching for small animal bones near a railroad track to achieve a realistic look, and then created a model display case that would best showcase the bones and artifacts.
Then, in 1984, Sunderman took Havens’ model to Chancellor Joseph Giusti in an attempt to move the project along. Havens’ model was used to build the final display case. The bones were placed under the guidance of geology professor James Farlow. The display was revealed that same year.
By the time the display was unveiled, Havens was working as a teaching assistant. To this day, he remains in possession of the original model. Havens currently serves as a company geologist at Irving Materials and works all over the state. Brinkman is now in the division of vertebrate paleontology at Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.
The display at Kettler lasted through the retirement of Farlow and Sunderman until finally coming down in 2016. After the display came down, Dattilo was given only a small amount of time to find a new home for the bones. He found the help of other faculty and students who were able to move the skeleton to an archeology lab.
In an article about the new display, Dattilo was quoted about moving the bones, saying, “There was a bunch of students pulling stuff out, trying to be careful and not break the skull.”
One of the students who helped move the bones at that time was Stoller. Once professor Daniel Fisher of the University of Michigan, and a mastodon expert himself, took a look at the bones, the school allowed him to take them to Michigan for deeper study.
Stoller was the one to drive them to Ann Arbor. He spoke of that experience, saying, “It was a big cargo van. We had to carefully wrap them and make sure to use lots of padding and cardboard.”
Stoller was chosen to intern at the UofM by Farlow and Dattilo, where he served as the caretaker for the mastodon, where he was tasked with inventorying, cleaning, positioning, and piecing the bones together. Stoller also used photos to create 3D models of the bones. The project took two and a half years. Stoller now works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where he works handling artifacts for major displays.
Stoller has also kept an eye on the mastodon project. He said, “Especially considering it is the mascot, the face of the university, it will be really cool to give her a proper display.”
Hadley-Salay was one of the students who had the task of cataloging and storing the mastodon bones once they had been taken down from their display at Kettler. She also was asked by Dattilo to create a 1/12th scale model as a visual aid for a new display.
To do this, Hadley-Salay used the 3D models of the bones from Stoller’s photos and 3D printed them. It took her four months to prepare the plastic pieces.
Hadley-Salay said, “To be a part of putting her back on display as she should be is awesome. Being able to work with something so prominent and important to the university—what more can a student do than say they worked on literally the icon of the university?”
Finally, the finished project is ready for the public.
More information about Purdue University Fort Wayne can be found on the school’s website.