Mastodons, the riddle of the Ice Age titans

February 2011. Workers on the site of a water treatment plant in the outskirts of Santiago uncover a complete mastodon skull. A first in Chile! On site, the Chilean archaeologist Rafael Labarca, who heads the excavation site, quickly takes awareness of the importance of this discovery. "This is a significant step forward for paleontology, because we will be able to determine which species lived in Chile".

But how explain the place of this distant cousin of the mammoth and the elephant on this side of the Andes? What is the cause of his death? Is it related to the extinction of mastodons in Latin America and in the rest of the world? Is it one of the last titans of the Ice age?

Pariscience 2014
: Monday 06th October 2014 from 14h00 to 15h30