GRAND RAPIDS, MI-- Owning a farm, the Clapp Family worked the land of their Kent County property for generations.

The meaning of that changed completely in 2022, when the Kent County Drain Commission discovered a mastodon fossil while completing a road project on their Kent City property.

Flabbergasted, the Clapps donated the fossil to the Grand Rapids Public Museum with the condition it stays in West Michigan for the community to see.

Led by scientist Cory Redman and the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, the museum has spent the last three years preserving and researching the remains.

On Wednesday, Sept. 10, the culmination of three years of work and over 13,000 years of history was unveiled at the museum, The Clapp Family Mastodon. Museum members, volunteers and employ

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