The Burning Tree mastodon as it appeared when I first saw it on that bitterly cold morning in December, 1989.The Wilderness Center, a non-profit nature center and land trust, offers a weekly podcast called “Wild Ideas.” The program features a variety of topics that are mostly related to Natural History, but would be interesting to a wide audience. I was pleased to be interviewed for the program recently. The topic is the extinction of the Ice Age “megafauna” and the insights contributed by the Burning Tree Mastodon to our understanding of that catastrophic event (or series of events). It was my privilege to have been a part of the discovery of that amazing critter and the scientific odyssey that resulted from its sudden reappearance after 13,000 years of slumber. Here is a link to the podcast: http://www.wildernesscenter.org/podcasts/default.aspx?a=133&c=0&k== If you listen to the podcast and still want more information about the Burning Tree Mastodon, check out my article “Forensic Mystery: the Burning Tree Mastodon” in the October-December 2006 issue of Timeline.
Brad Lepper
