Exhibit: The Ice Age Mammals that Roamed Throughout the Greater Kansas City Area

This exhibit within UMKC's Flarsheim Hall shares the work of the late Dr. Richard J. Gentile, Professor Emeritus at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. The exhibit debuted at the Box Gallery in downtown Kansas City and was moved to this location in October, 2022. The exhibit invites students, faculty, and guests to the university to explore and learn about this region during the Ice Age when herds of giant mammals lived in the area. Most of the species on display became extinct about 10,000 years ago. This exhibit compares skeletal remains of Ice Age mammals with their modern day relatives including the giant ground sloth, woolly mammoth, mastodon, saber-toothed cat, and the giant beaver. The first photo within this Clio entry, as well as the 360-degree image within the Google Streetview section of this Clio entry, show how the exhibit now appears on the UMKC campus. The rest of the photos depict the exhibit during its 2021 debut at the Box Gallery.

The exhibit incorporates skeletal parts and recreations of Pleistocene (Ice Age ) animals that were recovered from sand and gravel deposits of the major rivers and tributary streams of the area. The exhibit also includes fossils found in upland areas entombed in glacial sand and gravel deposits (outwash) and in wind-blown silt (loess). Pleistocene age elephants have been reported from over half of the 114 counties in Missouri and from numerous sites in Kansas. Voorhies (1990) estimates that no fewer than 10 mammoth skeletons lie buried in the average square mile of Nebraska landscape, an indication that large numbers of these huge proboscideans once roamed across the Central Mid-Continent.

The exhibit includes information on a variety of species, including ground sloths which first appeared in South America and gradually migrated into North America via the land bridge connecting the two continents that rose about 3 million years ago during the Pliocene Epoch. The species was given the scientific name Megalonyx jeffersoni in honor of President Jefferson, an amateur paleontologists, and one of the first to study extinct ground sloths. Two years before he became president, Thomas Jefferson published a description of an assortment of fossil bones including claws that had been excavated from a cave in West Virginia. Jefferson believed the claws were those from a large meat-eating animal that he named Megalonyx or “Great Claw” and instructed Lewis and Clark on their epic journey to explore the western part of the continent to watch for such a beast.

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