Cincinnati sentries plan mammoth move

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 25, 2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Cody Hefner (513) 608-5777, chefner@cincymuseum.org

Cincinnati sentries prepare for mammoth move

Iconic woolly mammoth family moving to Cincinnati Museum Center's new education, research and collections center

CINCINNATI – Cincinnati’s beloved family of patina mammoths are preparing to migrate to their new home. But first, they’ll do some showboating in the Reds Opening Day Parade.

The family of four wooly mammoths have been a Cincinnati mainstay for over 40 years, though their ancestors roamed the region 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. Each mammoth – two adults and two juveniles – consists of a steel frame wrapped in fiberglass with bronze powder mixed into the gel coat, which gives them their mint green patina. Though life-size in height, they weigh considerably less than real mammoths did; each adult is roughly 2,000 pounds and the two juvenile mammoths weigh 800 pounds. Originally located outside the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History (now the Museum of Natural History & Science at Cincinnati Museum Center), the mammoths most recently grazed outside Cincinnati Museum Center’s Geier Collections and Research Center. Soon, however, they’ll move to a new home that’s closer to, well, home.
 

Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) completed the purchase of a 200,000-square-foot complex spread across 11 acres at 1518 Dalton Avenue, right next door to the museum’s home at Union Terminal. The center will become a state-of-the-art campus for education, research and collections where CMC can share its research with the community and provide opportunities to learn directly from its collections. It will also allow the museum to consolidate the more than six million objects in its collections and provide for future collections growth and diversification as it continues to preserve and share the region’s story.

CMC’s six million historic artifacts and scientific specimens are cataloged into over a dozen collections, including both vertebrate and invertebrate paleontology, zoology, mineralogy, archaeology, history objects, fine art, manuscripts, moving images and photographs. The new education, research and collections center at Dalton Avenue will enhance the ability of CMC’s curators to access, preserve and research its robust collections.

One of CMC’s woolly mammoths will be featured in the 2025 Reds Opening Day Parade thanks to the support and heavy lifting of Fenton Rigging. In April, the two adult mammoths will be installed at the museum’s new education, research and collections center. The two juvenile mammoths will undergo maintenance and repairs before also being installed outside the new center.