The Fairview Museum of History and Art has agreed to pay $25,000 for the replica of a Columbian hairy mammoth skeleton that will be installed this fall.
The replica, about 25 feet long, 21 feet high and 6 feet wide, will be assembled a piece at a time in a new building. It will be featured in a panorama that includes a partial map of Utah showing the environment in which prehistoric animals lived.The building will also have other exhibits, including some of plaster casts of Avard Fairbanks sculptures contributed by the noted Utah sculptor's family.
The mammoth skeleton was discovered in 1988 during excavation at the Huntington Dam site in Emery County.
The Utah Museum of Natural History has since spent more than two years making molds of the skeleton that will be used in replicas for Price and Fairview.
The original bones will remain stored in a protected environment in Salt Lake City.
According to anthropologists, the surprise was finding the mammoth skeleton at such a high elevation. The prehistoric creature was not common in Utah but roamed at a much lower elevation, subsisting on a variety of vegetation different from that found at the Huntington location.
The age of the mammoth skeleton has been estimated around 11,000 years.
In addition to the new buildings, improvements, planned for the Fairview museum by its board, also include walkways and landscaping.
The museum's principal home will continue to be the old elementary school where hundreds of exhibits featuring pioneer artifacts are on display.
The museum board hopes to eventually open museum year round.