JERSEY CITY – The Liberty Science Center held a private VIP reception Thursday night to unveil the center’s new “Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age” exhibit, which opens officially on Saturday to the public. The exhibit runs until January 9.
About 100 people were in attendance to see an extensive collection of more than 100 rare fossils, touchable casts, and immersive media. The purpose of the exhibit is to show how those massive animals lived and how they became extinct, as well as how their existence is being studied by current scientists.
The highlight of the evening was the first look at the preserved specimen of Lyuba, the baby mammoth recently discovered in the Siberian tundra that dates back over 42,000 years old, and considered the most complete mammoth ever found.
Lyuba, encased under glass, will only be on display until November 10. The science center is only the second and last venue in the U.S. where the preserved mammoth is on display, the first being the Field Museum in Chicago.
To learn more about the exhibit, go to the Liberty Science Center’s website, www.lsc.org. – Ricardo Kaulessar