Object Status:
Extant
Accession Date:
December 1801
Primary Source Reference:
Aurora. General Advertiser (Philadelphia), 24 Dec 1801, 9 Jan 1802
Notes:
What Peale and his contemporaries called a mammoth (a species in the genus Mammuthus) was later identified as a mastodon (Mammut americanum). Peale exhumed the skeleton of the mastodon in 1801 near Montgomery, N.Y. It was first displayed in Philosophical Hall for the members of the American Philosophical Society on 24 Dec1801 and opened to the public thereafter. It now resides in the Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany. For a thorough account, see Chapter 4, "The Mastodon," in Selected Papers, 2, part 1: 308-379.
John D. Godman described and illustrated the Museum skeleton in his American Natural History. Part I. Mastology, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1826-1828), 2: 205-252 / https://hdl.handle.net/2027/dul1.ark:/13960/t3wt2j207?urlappend=%3Bseq=…
In 1802 Rembrandt Peale took the skeleton to London for display and published there the 46-page Account of the Skeleton of the Mammoth, a Non-descript Carnivorous Animal of Immense Size, Found in America / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/39768381
Peale's Common Name:
Mammoth
Current Common Name:
Mastodon
Current Scientific Name
Mammut americanum
