Sep. 4—The Austin Public Library is hosting a rare glimpse into the past with a connection to our area.
On Thursday, a tooth from a woolly mammoth was officially unveiled at the library as a loan from the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum. It’s a rare opportunity for people to share a moment in time when the now extinct animals roamed southeastern Minnesota.
“I just think it’s fun,” said Tim Ruzek, outreach coordinator for the Cedar River Watershed District, who helped coordinate bringing the tooth back to the library where it will be housed through December. “I think it captured the community’s imagination and interest back then. Now we know more today and more technology to make these drawings and things that can make us appreciate it more.”
The tooth’s journey back to Austin came with a bit of happenstance during a time when some of the library’s programming was centered around monsters. While brainstorming with the library’s director, Julie Clinefelter, and when a tree had washed up on the north side of the library resembling the Loch Ness Monster, Ruzek remembered learning about a mammoth tooth found in Austin four years after the tooth on display when Austin Mill Pond was being turned into a state park.
Sucked up as part of a dredging effort, the tooth was on display at a local furniture store that was highlighting “mammoth savings.” While Ruzek isn’t entirely sure where that tooth went, he did come to learn about this tooth at the Bell Museum.
“I only became aware of it being up there a few years ago,” Ruzek said. “I was doing the mammoth research on the Mill Pond find.”
The tooth from the Bell Museum is now featured as part of a broad display in the heart of the library featuring tidbits of the past and the find itself as well as books that may be of interest to kids visiting the display with their family.
“It makes you think about history, even prehistory,” said Courtney Wyant-Schmitt, the library’s Adult Services LIbrarian. “It’s really a great way to tie in a historical piece that was found in our area to our collection of books. Every story becomes a book, so it ties in really nicely to intrigue kids also.”
The mammoth tooth on display was originally found in 1916, when work was being done in what was called “Galloway’s pit” where work crews were removing thousands of loads of building sand for projects around Austin. Four years later, the second tooth was discovered in Mill Pond.
During its time with the Galloway family, the tooth made its way to California before Cedric Galloway, the grandson of the pit’s owner, John Galloway, donated it to the Bell Museum.
“We are grateful to the Bell Museum’s generosity in allowing us to share the amazing, prehistoric relic with the community and for the Austin Area Foundation’s grant to enhance its exhibit,” Ruzek said in a release earlier in the day, referring to the AAF’s $500 that went toward developing the display.
Wyant-Schmitt said that aside from being displayed, the mammoth tooth is already planned to be part of library programming this fall and comes in line with the library’s mission to provide meaningful and easy to access experiences for families.
In the end, it’s just about exposure to the world around us.
“It’s wonderful to bring in things,” she said. “A lot of barriers for families are to get to those places. Also, to pay to attend some of those places, so we try to keep things free and expose families and kids to things.”
“Bringing in anything that we can for a different sort of exposure for kids really means a lot,” she continued. “You never know what will spark that interest of knowledge for people. That’s what we’re really excited to have at the library.”
Ruzek expanded on that in that he hopes people will develop an interest in what is in their own back yard.
“It’s appreciation for the unknown,” he said. “It’s cool when you discover something that’s been underground for many, many centuries. Appreciation for different landscapes, different creatures roaming this landscape back at that time and just some of the hidden gems that are beneath us.”