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Journeys Info

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Baraboo Hills

JOURNEYS; AN ICE AGE ADVENTURE takes place in the heart of the Baraboo Hills.

Composed of very old, reddish-purple quartzite -- a hardened sandstone, this formation ranges roughly east-west across southern Wisconsin not far from Madison and Wisconsin Dells.

Some book scenes in and near the Baraboo Hills to browse include: Hemlock Draw, Baxter's Hollow, Tower Rock, Pine Hollow, Devil's Lake State Park, and Natural Bridge State Park. 

JOURNEYS 2; AN ICE AGE RESCUE begins along the shore of Devil's Lake

(in the heart of the Baraboo Hills), then moves north to Mill Bluff State Park.

Begin with these links.
Natural Bridge State Park
Nature Conservancy (Baraboo Hills
Map of the JOURNEYS; AN ICE AGE ADVENTURE's setting

(including Natural Bridge State Park and Tower Rock)
​Mill Bluff State Park is the site of much of the action in JOURNEYS 2; AN ICE AGE RESCUE

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Mastodons

​Mastodons were primarily browsers who tended more toward woody plants while mammoths favored grasslands. Mastodons were somewhat shorter and stockier than mammoths and their lives may have resembled those of the modern African forest elephants. Wisconsin hosted an abundant population of "furry elephants" (both mastodons and mammoths)
during the Ice Age. Bones and teeth have been discovered at a number of sites across the state and specimens are on display
​at museums in Kenosha, Milwaukee, and Madison.

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Boaz Mastodon

This is the skeleton of the "Boaz Mastodon," discovered in 1897 just west of

Richland Center, Wisconsin. It is now on display at the University of Wisconsin Geology Museum

in Madison. This creature was part of the inspiration for Journeys: An Ice Age Adventure.

Mastodon bones and teeth are found throughout the Midwest and sometimes yield

evidence of humans butchering them.

Check out new research into the Boaz Mastodon at these links. The new discoveries reference the "Boaz-Anderson Mills Mastodon" and are fascinating!

 

Journal Sentinel "Mastodon Mystery"
Explore the UW Geology Museum


Check out The Elephant Listening Project and the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (Orphan's Project) to learn about mastodons through the lives of their modern cousins.
 

This link describes the probable role of mastodons in their ecosystem and warns of impending danger regarding today's forest elephant population.
 

​A look at how elephants communicate over long distance, and quite likely,

mammoths and mastodons as well.
 

​60 Minutes piece on forest elephants and their "language."
"What's Inside an Elephant's Trunk?" video

Ice Age Glaciers

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Ice Age glaciers covered a sizable portion of North America. They played a major role in shaping

the modern landscape of Wisconsin, advancing and retreating numerous times over the centuries. They formed hills and ridges, scraped plains, created lakes, and shifted the course of rivers.

The last major glacial advance in North America is known as the Wisconsin Glaciation. The glaciers featured "lobes" of compacted snow and ice that covered much of Wisconsin. In some places, the glaciers were many hundreds of feet thick and their weight literally pushed the land downward!

Here is a link to a great activity to understand the flow dynamics of glaciers (how they move).

Megafauna (huge animals)

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Many of Wisconsin's Ice Age animal species grew to incredible size, including

the short-faced bear pictured. Note the size of the man!

A pretty interesting article about 3-D modeling of Ice Age creatures. There is a nice illustration of dozens of Pleistocene (Ice Age) species in the middle of it.

 

Check out this mammoth discovered in Michigan and the size of those tusks!

This site has an excellent animation of the advance and retreat of glaciers in Wisconsin.

Elephant Conservation

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The world needs creatures that inspire wonder. 


There is important work to be done to ensure that elephants, like their Ice Age cousins, don't disappear from the earth. At current rates, elephants could become extinct within 20 years.

Consider that the elephant population in East Africa has dropped more than 90% in the last

30 years (from 3 million down to 250,000)!
 

Consider that poaching is currently reducing the elephant population in Africa by 10% per year.

Preservation of habitat, political stability, sustainable economic development, anti-poaching efforts (and especially, reducing demand for ivory) will all play a role in the long term

survival of elephants.

Consider these sobering statistics from the World Wildlife Fund
" In 1930, as many as 10 million wild elephants roamed huge swaths of the African continent.
​But decades of poaching and conflict have since decimated African elephant populations.
Today, there are just 415,000 elephants across Africa." 

Conservation information is available
Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

This link describes the probable role of mastodons in their ecosystem and warns of impending danger regarding today's forest elephant population.

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