Life in the Past
Over the past 10 years the State Museum has developed a strong collection of fossils. Included are the first dinosaur fossils found in South Carolina and a number of other dinosaur fossils. Collections of other fossils from this time period, the Mesozoic Era, which ended about 65 million years ago, are being developed in conjunction with a dinosaur exhibit planned for spring 2001.
Fossils from the Cenozoic Era, the last 65-plus million years, are the largest portion of the State Museum fossil collection. It numbers thousands of specimens from nearly all of the major time periods of the era. Particularly strong is the Pleistocene, or "Ice Age," collection.
The center of the Pleistocene area is the life-sized reconstruction of a mastodon, a distant relative of the modern-day elephants. Of particular interest is the size of the curving tusks, each of which is over 10 feet long!
Other portions of the collection are under study with other museums and universities, including The Cranbrook Institute, The University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, The University of Kansas Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, the University of South Carolina, the University of Florida and Georgia College and State University.