The Mastodons of My Youth

While this book is all about the author's childhood fixation on dinosaurs which has carried over into his adulthood, I didn't really grow up with dinosaurs. I grew up with a mastodon.

The New York State museum in Albany, NY is home to the Cohoes Mastodon. Not to be confused with mammoths (which are bigger) or dinosaurs (which came millions of years before), mastodons look like big furry elephants with huge tusks and lived in New York only about 10,000 years ago. Mastodons actually existed alongside stone age humans, at the end of the last ice age, who basically hunted them to extinction.

The city of Cohoes is right near the city of Albany, which is right near where I grew up. Since museums are educational and free, we went there a lot when I was a kid. Later, in college, I worked in a mail-room in the basement of the museum, so I saw the mastodon on lunch breaks.

The Cohoes Falls, where the skeleton was found. Very dramatic!

The museum specializes in these life-size dioramas that I loved. Here is the mastodon as it would have looked alive, along with a little baby mastodon. They also have an Indian longhouse that you can go inside and another Indian who's building a canoe.

The museum itself looks like a sandwich.

It sits at one end of the Empire State Plaza. The state capitol building is at the other end. This is the view from the museum steps. I ate lots of lunches here.

There's also a great performing arts center called "The Egg."

It's weird.

Visit Albany! They have a mastodon and an Egg!