New discoveries about the ice age mastodons

Middletown — A Powerpoint presentation, “Ice Age Mastodons of New York State: New Discoveries of Old Friends,” will be led by Dr. Warren D. Allmon at 7:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 22. The program will be held in the universally accessible Biology-Technology Building, Room 207, at Orange County Community College, on the corner of South Street and Grandview Avenue in Middletown. Allmon has been involved in mastodon archeological digs in Hyde Park, in Chemung County, and North Java, all in New York State. His presentation will include information about these mastodons, and mastodons in general. He will also shed some knowledge on “Sugar,” the mastodon on permanent display in the Bio-Tech building, which he has examined and done an analysis on. Lecture attendees may walk down the corridor and view “Sugar.” Allmon is the director of the Paleontological Research Institution, and the founder and developer of the new Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, found online at www.museumoftheearth.org. He is presently an adjunct associate professor of geological and biological sciences at Cornell University. He received a bachelor’s in geology from Dartmouth College, and a doctorate in earth and planetary sciences from Harvard University. His research specialties include the systematics of Cenozoic gastropods and the interaction between ecology and macro-evolution, particularly speciation and bio-diversity. The free lecture is the third in the Lyceum Winter-Spring Lecture Series, produced by Cultural Affairs. For more information, call 341-4891, write to cultural@sunyorange.edu or visit www/sunyorange.edu/lyceum.