Sunday, July 31, 2011

Our 'baby' is a star!


"Tunguska" the AZGS map store's mammoth mascot, was profiled in the Arizona Daily Star today.

She's actually a museum-quality reproduction of a 1-year Siberian wooly mammoth, on loan from the Museum of Natural History in Novosibirsk, Russia. Her name was the winning entry in a kids-only contest held during the Tucson Book Festival [right, my photo] where she was a big hit with kids and their parents.

The fiberglass body is covered with fur from an Altai yak, arguably the closest existing fur to what a real mammoth would look and feel like.