Elephants in Lincoln: A Mammoth Discovery

August 17, 2012

Wild Hare Café, Elkhart, IL

Guest lecturer: Dennis Campbell, Lincoln College Professor of Biology & Geology

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The G. Dennis Campbell Creekside Outdoor Center
for Environmental Education at Lincoln College <-- click here

  Campbell Creekside Outdoor Center for Environmental Education at LC | <-- click here

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       In the past seven years a remarkable amount of Ice-Age fossils has been discovered in the creeks around Lincoln, Illinois. Geology and biology students at Lincoln College have been involved with some spectacular finds – including the discovery of a woolly mammoth (presently considered one of the largest and last woolly mammoths on the continent). This presentation will detail the discovery of Judd, the Lincoln College Woolly Mammoth, by Judd McCullum, the Lincoln College student. Since that discovery on Lincoln College property in 2005, local residents have revealed to the College and to scientists at the Illinois State Museum many new records of additional Pleistocene mammals species that lived in this area thousands of years ago. Please accompany him on this “big game safari” in search of elephants in Lincoln.

 

       Dennis Campbell, who holds a doctorate in zoology from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, has been a professor of biology and geology at Lincoln College in Lincoln, Illinois, for almost twenty years. He is currently engaged in the development of Creekside: an outdoor environmental education center at nearby Sugar Creek for use by the College and local community organizations. Although a native of Texas, he has worked as a biologist throughout the South Pacific, Mexico, and the United States.

       

        Dr. Campbell’s  talk will cover three major time periods from far gone eras when wooly mammoths and perhaps an occasional sabre tooth tiger roamed, to the 1800’s during Abraham Lincoln’s life, when not only wolves but an occasional timber rattlers could visit.  The final era is now and what still remains and may in fact be returning  to the wilds of Logan County.   

   
       Dr. Campbell, who has taught at Lincoln College for twenty-two years offering courses in both life and earth sciences, holds bachelor and master degrees from Texas Tech University and a doctorate in zoology from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.   He is also the director of the Creekside Center for Environmental Education, a new offering through Lincoln College’s Biology Department.

 

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