(Radio Iowa)- There’s an open house in Oskaloosa later this month for the unveiling of a replica that will help tell the story of a massive animal that roamed the area 10-thousand years ago. A life-size model of a woolly mammoth is going on permanent display at the Environmental Learning Center in Oskaloosa. Chris Clingan is director of the Mahaska County Conservation Board, which operates the center.

“It gives you a real life idea of how large these creatures were and just how unique they are,” Clingan says. In 2010, after a heavy rain, a man who owned property about six miles east of Oskaloosa found the leg bone of a mammoth sticking out of a ravine. “We actually have that actual bone, that first bone that was found, on display here,” Clingan says. Bones from three different mammoths were eventually discovered in the area.

“That was significant because I think it was the first time that it actually gave scientific evidence that there was a population of mammoths in Iowa,” he says. “There was a saber toothed tiger over in southwest Iowa that was discovered just a few months ago, a skull and everything, and so there’s evidence that these creatures once roamed the lands here and that’s truly amazing.”

Clingan remembers seeing a replica of a giant sloth at the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History when he was a kid and he says seeing this full-body replica of a woolly mammoth is equally awe inspiring. “At one point in time here in Iowa anywhere from 11,000 to 13,000 years ago, during end of the last Ice Age, there was a woolly elephant roaming around,” Clingan says. “It was really fascinating to me to realize the world we live in now was so much different not too long ago when you think of how long the Earth’s been around.”

The mammoth themed open house will be on June 27th, from 4 until 8 p.m. The Learning Center in Oskaloosa opened just a couple of years ago and the building was designed around getting a life sized woolly mammoth replica inside.