<figure class="standalone-image" style="display:block;"><img src="/files/members/michael-wing/images/img4263.jpg" alt="Gift shop" title="He didn't seem to have any hours posted, but I could see through the window that he was there." width="500" height="375" /><figcaption class="caption" style="display:block">He didn't seem to have any hours posted, but I could see through the window that he was there.</figcaption>
Acting on a tip from a friend, I invited myself into basement of this gift shop even though it was nine o’clock at night. Talk about fossils! There are literally tons of extinct steppe bison bones, woolly mammoth bones, mammoth tusks, moose antlers, whale baleen, and just about every kind of large animal part you can imagine. And, a few you probably can’t imagine.
but the really cool stuff is downstairs.
The proprietor cleans and polishes them, carves them into art pieces, or just sells them as is.
The big bone in the foreground is a mammoth leg.
This is the third time in a week I have encountered steppe bison fossils without even trying – see my journal posts for February 26 and 24. The bison must have been extremely common around here. This area was never covered by glaciers during the last ice age. It was a cold dry grassland, as was floor of the shallow Bering Sea.
Some of them are quite chalky from weathering. He cleans them up with epoxy and polishes them.
I got a good deal on some things.
A steppe bison bone and a piece of woolly mammoth tusk,
It’s odd that although trade in elephant ivory is extremely restricted by U.S. and international law (in fact it’s almost totally illegal), there are no rules that regulate what you can do with mammoth ivory. That’s because mammoths are already extinct, while elephants are endangered.