Mastodon skeleton

'Owen realised the mastodon skeleton was vastly too big because he compared it with modern elephant skeletons. He was one of first people who really thought about reconstructing skeletons using modern analogue animals.'
Prof Adrian Lister, palaeobiologist

Albert Koch unearthed hundreds of huge bones in Missouri, USA, in 1840. He reconstructed a skeleton poorly, padding it with extra bones and displaying the tusks pointing downwards. Koch named the creature Missourium, even though it was very similar to previous finds of creatures called mastodons.

The monstrous skeleton was exhibited around the USA, and in 1841 was shipped across the Atlantic and displayed at Piccadilly in London. Richard Owen, then employed by the Royal College of Surgeons, came to see the reconstructed animal and was immediately suspicious of its size and the placement of its tusks.

Owen persuaded the British Museum to purchase Koch's entire collection of bones, including the mastodon skeleton. He then disassembled the skeleton and remounted it, removing the extra bones and flipping the tusks into their correct positions.

The Mammut americanum skeleton still stands in the Natural History Museum galleries, unchanged since Owen reassembled it.

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