Mastodon From West Michigan Dig to Debut September in Grand Rapids

The Clapp Family of Kent City, Michigan have generously donated the juvenile mastodon skeleton to the local public museum. Soon visitors will be able to gaze in awe at the "remarkably complete" mastodon discovered right here in West Michigan.

According to the Grand Rapids Public Museum the newest artifact in the collection goes on display to the public next month:

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The Clapp Family Mastodon

What began as a typical day for crews working on a drainage project led to a historic once-in-a-lifetime find for local landowners Courtney and Michael Clapp when in 2022 construction crews with Busscher Construction uncovered bones in nearby field.

Crews reached out to the Grand Rapid Public Museum (GRPM) who, with help from University of Michigan staff, recovered nearly 130 bones of a juvenile mastodon believed to have died at about 10 years of age.

For a year and a half, the bones dried in the Museum’s Collections. With partners at the University of Michigan, the Museum has studied and conserved the bones...Based on the pollen and sediments found with the bones, we also know that the surrounding vegetation was a spruce-oak dominated forest with abundant sedge wetlands that were growing on the margin of a glacial lake.

Nearly 13,210 years later and nearly 70% of the mastodon's skeleton remains intact. According to the GRPM the mastodon is ready to make its public debut on Thursday September 11, 2025. Adds the museum,

The Clapp Family Mastodon gets its name from donors/landowners Courtney and Michael Clapp, who generously donated the skeleton to the Museum, so it can be enjoyed by as many West Michiganers [sic] as possible, preserved for study, and still stay close to home...These herbivores went extinct around 12,000 years ago.