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Image of Mastodon bone
Credit: The American Philosophical Society
In the 1790s Wistar, one of the nation's great medical anatomists, had become fascinated with the ancient bones of exotic species. At the White House, to which he had been invited by President Thomas Jefferson, Wistar examined the bones of a mastodon that George Rogers Clark unearthed in 1807 at Bone Lick, Kentucky. Wistar then wrote the detailed description pictured next to the bone.