The University of Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln Nebraska

We extended our stay here in York, Nebraska as a winter warning was issued for west of us. Here the forecast was for high wind and rain while up to eight inches of snow was supposed to fall in North Platte and Ogallala.
Luckily we are used to entertaining ourselves and so we decided to drive to Lincoln to visit the Nebraska State Museum at the University of Nebraska Morrell Hall. Its website said it had the most complete elephant fossil collection in the world.

After a short drive we actually found a parking place for our large truck. We kind of stuck out but what the heck surely the campus police will not write a ticket for visitors to the museum? In front of the place a huge Colombian Mammoth bronze cast sculpture demanded that we take a picture of it.

Entering we bought tickets and we climbed to the third floor to the mineral and rock exhibits. Lots of meteorites were on display along with many minerals we have in our collection. Still it was pretty cool to be able to study so many excellent specimens. The third floor also contained quite a few Jurassic specimens and dinosaur exhibits which always draw us in.

One exhibit was a huge dinosaur femur. It reminded me of the brontosaurus femur I had seen while doing my geology summer field work in Wyoming way back in 1973. That bone was still in situ, in place, and had just been discovered but not yet dug up.On the same floor a weapon display contained a beheading sword, a heavily jeweled Turkish flintlock pistol, and many native American atlalt points.

The next level was dominated by the elephant, mammoth, and mastodon skeletons. Many were of mastodons and mammoths we had never heard of. Mammoth teeth were in many of the displays and we marveled as we viewed  shoveler, four tuskers, and scooped mammoths. Of course there were the usual Woolly and Colombian mammoths.

Other displays showed different types of fossil rhinoceros, camels, extinct pronghorns, burrowing giant beaver fossil and casts. We both liked the giant armadillo fossil and we concentrated on studying the teeth as they are often found in the Peace River in Florida.

The lowest level had lots of exhibits of fossil fish, and one of my favorites a huge limestone slab made almost entirely of complete crinoid fossils. Called the lily of the sea they are actually an animal that was attached to the sea floor on a long pedestal, at the top of which the animal was crowned with multi armed segments that caught food as it flowed by.
The Museum really does have the best elephant mammoth, and mastadon displays we have seen, and for any fossil buff it ranks up there as one of the best we have visited. Now we can go back and look at our collection, adding to our stories we tell when people stop by our booths! Clear skies.