The Montgomery Village Museum opens for the season on May 7, welcoming a new and much anticipated mastodon exhibit.

These are the not original bones unearthed in Montgomery in 1802, but a replica from another dig. The Warren Mastodon, according to the American Museum of Natural History, was discovered in a bog in Newburgh in 1845. Those remains are property of the AMNH. The replica was recently moved to Montgomery from SUNY Orange.

The Mastodon, which is distantly related to the elephant, inhabited North and Central America approximately 10,000 years ago. The first fully intact mastodon skeleton ever discovered was exhumed by Charles Willson Peale in Montgomery in 1801 from what has been described as a marl pit on property that now belongs to the Dollar General Store on Route 17K, just east of the Village of Montgomery. It was put on display in his famous Philadelphia Museum and later sold to P.T. Barnum. It is currently on display at Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany.

Village of Montgomery Historian Brian Fitzpatrick will host a short program at 4 p.m. followed by light refreshments.

The Museum is located at 142 Clinton Street.

For additional information, please call ( 845 ) 457-7576 or email: historian@villageofmontgomery.org.