Be taken on a journey through the lives of Midwestern elephants – mastodons, and mammoths – during the Ice Age. Mastodons were the great Ice Age survivors, outliving all of the ancient elephants and maybe even mammoths! Discover the bones that led to the creation of the mounted mastodon skeleton in the Changes exhibition. They are from the largest mastodon on record to date – a male standing 10 feet at the shoulder – uncovered at Boney Spring in Benton County, MO in 1971. Investigate the work of the Illinois State Museum’s Midwestern Mammoth and Mastodon project (M-cubed), a four year project funded by the National Science Foundation to study the extinction of these species in the Midwest. Follow the clues left behind by these great animals, and come to your own conclusions about their fate. Was it disease? Human hunting? Climate change and habitat loss? … Or was it the impact of a comet? You decide what lessons we have learned, and let us know with your vote.