My summer has been bursting with mammoths, which has been
both marvellous and memorable. As you will know if you know me, or follow me on
socials, I am a tad mad on anything mammoth. This is a by-product of research
for a book which has stuck. The last few months have been full of mammoth!
It began with our first family holiday since 2018. To
celebrate my youngest’s completion of his school career and taking advantage of
being able to travel outside peek time, we went to Italy. We immersed in
exquisite cuisine and iconic art, but also mammoths!
On day one is Rome I found an addition to the herd, which I
named Roma, much to my kid’s dismay! I also spent time, while waiting for the
family to rouse in the mornings, reading about the battle to conserve mammoth
bones they found on a 1950s archaeological dig within the city.
But Florence was the jewel in our Italian mammoth adventure,
with a visit to the Museo Di Storia Naturale Gelolgia E Paleontologia. This
museum had a huge collection of beautifully curated mammoth specimens,
including no less than four almost complete Southern Mammoth skeletons found in
the appropriately named ‘Tusc’an’ region of Italy. Despite the museum being
located a few step along the same road as the Galleria Academia that houses the famous David, it was empty. We had the whole place to ourselves to explore
and enjoy the exhibits.
Venice too had a few mammoth gems, in curious Scopri Museo
di Storia Naturale di Venezia. Which is like a blend of the Oxford University
Museum of Natural History and The Pitt Rivers. with a modern curated Natural
History section and a cabinet of curiosities style anthropology section.
All in all I was delighted to have indulged my obsession an
shared it with my family although I’m
not sure they quite so pleased!
Freshly back from Italy and it was a race to get everything
ready to help with the #TuskForce team of volunteers at the Hill’s Product quarry in
the Cotswolds for a Palaeontology dig at the site made famous by the BBC
documentary David Attenborough Mammoth Graveyard. More on that in my next post!
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