WATERFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WXYZ) — A mastodon skeleton known as Elmer is leaving Oakland Community College after decades on display, heading to a new home at the Cranbrook Institute of Science.
Watch Jolie Sherman's video report:
With OCC's Highland Lakes Campus set to close in the fall of 2027, the college partnered with Cranbrook to give the once 12-foot-tall, 5.5-ton skeleton a new exhibit space.
Lucy Hale, the Susan Flint Cooper Director of the Cranbrook Institute of Science, says the state is home to fossil-rich areas, especially for ice age fossils, so it was uncommon to find something like this.
"With this find, what was uncommon was there was so much of the mastodon intact," Hale said.
Experts say a third of Elmer's bones were discovered on March 11, 1968, at a construction site on M-59, between Elizabeth Lake and Williams Lake Road in White Lake.
The construction company, Groleau Brothers Inc., connected with scientists at Cranbrook and OCC, which is how Elmer ended up at the college, where the skeleton has been on display since the 1980s, stretching between the first and second floors of Levinson Hall.
The creature is believed to have lived in Michigan roughly 10,000 years ago. Mastodons ranged in height from 7 feet in females to 10 feet or more in males, and an adult could weigh up to 6 tons.
Elmer got his name from the preservation process used after the bones were unearthed.
"The bones had been in the ground for 10,000 years, and once they were out of that situation, they did start to deteriorate a little bit. So, they very quickly covered them in a solution that contained a large percentage of Elmer's glue," Hale said.
OCC Chancellor Peter Provenzano said the move to Cranbrook will dramatically expand the number of people who can see Elmer.
"We were looking at ways to create an exhibit where we can really enhance the way we're educating the community. Instead of hundreds of people seeing Elmer, thousands of people will be able to see them with this partnership," Provenzano said.
Rather than relocating Elmer to OCC's newly renovated facility at the Orchard Ridge Campus in Farmington Hills, the mastodon is moving to Cranbrook next week, with a grand reveal in its existing mastodon exhibit scheduled for next summer.
Hale said the move involves carefully taking the skeleton apart.
"It's a careful disassembling of undoing all the metal connection pieces that hold his bones together. There is a portion of Elmer that is real and a portion that's plaster reproduction, so the plaster reproduction might be more fragile of the pieces," Hale said.
She says the process is expected to take a couple of days.
Steve Kubiak, who visited with his son to see Elmer before the move, said the local connection makes the discovery all the more remarkable.
"It's very local. M-59. Elizabeth Lake Road and Williams Lake Road. It's amazing they used to walk around here," Kubiak said.
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