PRIMATES: This exhibition highlights the diversity that is classified under the term “primates,” from the Gigantopithecus blacki, a fossil primate that stood between 8-9 feet tall and weighted over 600 pounds to a fossil primate found in China that is approximately two inches in length. Included in this exhibition is a section that focuses on Prosimian and Anthropoid species.
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THE LAST ICE AGE: This exhibition focuses on the excavation of a mastodon on the Johnson Farm in Leland, Illinois in 1976. While Lorne Johnson and his son were widening a stream that drained their farm, they discovered a three-foot long mastodon jawbone, which they then brought to the NIU Anthropology Department. Further excavation, carried out by NIU faculty and students uncovered hundreds of pieces of bone that dated to approximately 11,000 years ago. This exhibition also examines how bones become fossils and provides a comparison of mastodons and mammoths, two species that are often mistaken. There is also a section that contains information and examples of human stone-tool production and introduces the Land Bridge theory that suggests a migration of humans from Asia to the Americas.
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