The Arizona Geological Survey | Naming the Baby Mammoth

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And the Winner is…

Tunguska!

More than 500 people took part in AZGSs "Name the Baby Wooly Mammoth" contest at last weekend's Tucson Festival of Books. (Hundreds more stroked the soft yak hair covering the museum-quality replica of a 1-year old mammoth.).

The names ranged widely, and wildly, from Wooly to Choxie to Zeus, with the most common names being Fluffy (a big hit with the three- to six-year old set), Mannie (the wooly mammoth of the animated movie series, Ice Age) and Wooly—or some variant thereof, e.g., Wooly Bully.

Over lunch, six volunteers from the AZGS staff perused all the entry slips and selected 15 favorite names (see below). AZGS employees then voted for their favorite name. And the results:

Tunguska - by Hugo F.
Wooliam - by Helen Bailey & by Jenny B.
Bubba - by Daniel

The winners receive a $10.00 voucher for use in our bookstore.

Tunguska resides at the Arizona Geological Survey Bookstore at 416 W. Congress. Come visit him there sometime. And while you are downtown, stop by the atrium in the State Complex Building and see the skeleton of a 15,000-year old wooly rhinoceros.

Names selected by the panel, in no particular order:

Wooliam
Woolford (lots of variants, e.g., Woolbert)
Katarina
Lord Bully
Lulu

Petrouchka
Bessie
Vladimir
Wooly Bully
Tunguska

Tuskin Timberlake
Kristicoff
Bubba
Dimitri
Buttercup

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: Both Tunguska and the wooly rhinoceros are on loan from the Museum of Natural History at Novosibirsk, Russia.

Note: The Tunguska River in Siberia was the site of a large explosion on 30 June 1908. Apparently, a comet or meteorite burst about 3- to 6-miles above the Earth's surface. More than 80 million trees over 830 sq miles were knocked down. (Source: Wikipedia)