Mastodon State Historic Site
The Mastodon State Historic Site is a state park located off Interstate 55 at Imperial in Jefferson County of the U.S. state of Missouri. The 172 hectare site is located on 137 m height and contains the Kimmswick Bone Bed an important common finding place of mastodon bone and stone projectile points.
35000-10000 years ago, the glaciers of the ice sheet moved slowly melting Laurentidischer back north, leaving at this point probably a landscape with mineral springs and partly swampy ground. Some Mastodons and other animals drowned in the swamp and thus leaving well preserved bones. Early Native reached the area by 12,000 years before our time so there over a short period humans and mastodons lived at the same time.
The first records of bone finds are from the early 1800s. In 1839 there were weathered found objects along the Rock Creek and excavations of Albert C. Koch, the owner of the St. Louis Museum. In the firm conviction that we have found a new unknown type, he called it Missouri Leviathan and showed them at shows in the U.S. and Europe. However, the comparative anatomist Richard Owen of the British Museum in London was the pieces clearly identify as American Mastodon.
Beginning of the twentieth century lived the interest in finding place again when the amateur paleontologist CW Beehler dug up several skull, jaw parts, teeth and bones. The railway carried a number of curious and interested people who visited the museum. The finds from this period are not completely available and not well documented. Between 1940 and 1942, the archaeologist Robert McCormick Adams of the St. Louis Academy of Science led the excavations. He discovered more bones, tusks and a few individual artifacts of human origin.
During the construction of Interstate 55, the interest in the area woke up again and several individuals and organizations made efforts to under protection so that in 1976 the Missouri Department of Natural Resources acquired the center including the archaeological site and declared as a state park.
Further excavations were carried out in 1979 and Russell W. Graham of the Illinois State Museum had the first solid evidence for an interaction between human and Mastodon, as there is a stone projectile was found in the bone that the Clovis culture could be assigned. The Kimmswick Bone Bed was registered on 14 April 1987 in the National Register of Historic Places. In 1996 the area was renamed in Mastodon State Historic Site.
Overall, the bones were found more than 60 mastodons. In the local museum a complete skeleton of a male copy is issued among others. In the park grounds of the Tom Stockwell Wildflower Trail connects the museum with archaeological sites. Next to the museum covers an area of fodder plant for birds and butterflies in 1995 with the Callison Memorial Bird Sanctuary created.