Alumni donations to the university usually come in the form of money. But, on seldom occasions, contributions come in different forms, including ivory tusks.

UTM alumnus James “Robby” Clapper and his father Jon began their Alaska fishing vacation by being flown into the remote wilderness of Alaska in a small single prop plane. They had a shotgun to protect them from grizzly bears and fishing poles to catch Alaskan Salmon.

As they were the only humans in the wilderness within 100 miles, they certainly knew that they would be taking away memories and great fishing stories. They didn’t think that they would be taking away a pair of ivory tusks from what is believed to be a Columbian mammoth.

“We were casting for salmon and trout when we first came around a sharp bend in the river when Dad first spotted the tusks,” Clapper says. “They were about three feet above the water with the proximal sides of the tusks sticking out of the cliff and the distal sides, the points, along with the majority of the tusks embedded in the clay,” Clapper says.

Clapper says that he and his father were the first people down the Aniak River since the spring melt and floods that left the tusks exposed in the river bank. After assessing the situation, they decided to get out of their boat and extract the tusks. This would be a task that would take time and that was first met with difficulties.

“The first attempt to land me on the other bank ended up with me swimming because I misjudged the jump from the raft to the bank.

The situation was a tad hectic due to the steep bank, lack of a landing area and the fast current in the bend. The second time I jumped from the inflatable canoe and got on the bank,” Clapper says.

Clapper and his father had no real equipment to excavate the tusks, but they were able to improvise using a small tent stake mallet and fashioned some crude tools out tent stakes wrapped with duct tape that would be used as handles.

They also took some measures to make sure that the tusks wouldn’t fall out into the river and be lost. “I attached parachute cord to a tent stake that I stuck in the clay above the tusks and secured the other end to the tusks so if the bank gave away we wouldn’t lose the tusks,” Clapper explained.

After more than two hours of excavation, they had removed the tusks. “The idea of touching and seeing something that no living creature had for thousands of years was a pretty amazing feeling for us all. Needless to say we were elated when were finally able to realize their full size and beauty,” Clapper says.

A week later, Clapper brought the tusks back to Tennessee. He then decided to donate them to UTM in the care of Professor Helmut Wenz. .

“I brought them to Dr. Wenz for several reasons. First of all after having known Dr. Wenz for the last two years I knew that he and his department would take good care of them and could tell me scores of information about the tusks. Secondly I saw it as a way to give back to the university. Lastly, I believe that finds of this nature should not be kept in a private collection somewhere but should have the chance to be studied and used to enlighten us about the past,” Clapper says.

Students in the Methods of Zooarchaeology course at UTM are getting the opportunity to preserve the tusks. Wenz, who teaches the course, says that he believes the tusks are from a Columbian mammoth, which is a close species of the Wooly Mammoth. Wenz also says that the mammoth is a young adult as he has seen larger tusks from this species.

“It is great to have these tusks at UTM. They will go on display soon in the EPS building and stay here at UTM for as long as Robby likes,” Wenz says.