| Photo credits: Evangelia Tsoukala | Design: Evangelos Vlachos | THE MILIA MAMMUT BORSONI (GREVENA, MACEDONIA, GREECE): EXCAVATION AND DISPLAY OF THE LONGEST TUSKS IN THE WORLD Evangelia Tsoukala 1 and Dick Mol 2 Palaeontological research and systematic excavations in the area of Milia started in 1996 by Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, when a partial skel- eton of Mammut borsoni (HAYS, 1834), was unearthed from unconsoli- dated sand deposits of Aliakmon river at the locality called “Milia 1”. The Milia paleontological heritage has been put on display in the Natural His- tory Museum of Milia, Municipality of Herakleotes, Prefecture of Grevena. This is a local museum in which the scientific information is presented in an attractive way to the public. The people of Milia, especially the shep- herds and the workers in the local sandpit, got involved and turned out to be very good fossil hunters. In October 2006, a tusk was discovered during work in a sandpit named “Milia 5”. We visited the area and made the first identification. In 2007, be- tween July 17th and 29th, the “Milia 5” team unearthed another poorly preserved partial skeleton of Mammut borsoni (figure 1). The measure- ments along the outer curvature of the enamel-less, gently curving tusks, are 4.58 m and 5.02 m, respectively. This pair of tusks are the longest tusks ever discovered in the world. The specimen is identified as an adult male individual in the prime of his life. The site was excavated horizontally in squares, a total of 32 m 2 (figure 1). All finds were logged with x, y and z co-ordinates to an external datum point to the north of the excavation. For long specimens, angle of dip and azimuth were also measured. Plaster jackets were used for the safe lifting and transportation of the tusks, mandibles and bones of the post-cranial skeleton (figure 2 and 3a,b). This partial skeleton was studied by us and subsequently put on display in the Milia museum (figure 4). The measurements gained from this skeleton provided a lot of information on the size and the morphology of the animal. He was 350 cm high at the shoulder and 870 cm long from the tip of the tusks towards the tail. The Milia Mammut borsoni was a heavily-built browsing animal with very large tusks in male individuals. A scale model of this zygodont was produced by artist Remie Bakker based on the fossil record of Milia. We would like to underscore that the success of this project is due to some several factors: the close cooperation of the local people, museum displays of the local fossil heritage and sharing the analyses of the paleon- tological research with the public. Many new findings in the area of Milia, such as those of the mastodons, rhinoceroses, tapirs amongst others, have increased our knowledge of extinct animals from the time span of about 3 million years ago. This is fossil evidence of a lost world which has partly been collected by people who are in the field day in, day out. It is our responsibility to continue to foster this collaboration in order to get a better picture of the life in the Milia area a long time ago. With collaboration of: O. Koukousioura, G. Lazaridis, Sp. Pappa, K. Tsekoura, W. van Logchem, E. Vlachos, and V. Makridis, N. Bacharidis, D. Labretsa 1 Aristotle University, School of Geology, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece. E-mail: lilits@geo.auth.gr 2 Natural History Museum, Rotterdam and Musée Crozatier, Le Puy-en-Velay, Haute-Loire, France, c/o Gudumholm 41, NL-2133 HG Hoofddorp, the Netherlands. E-mail: dickmol@telfort.nl References Mol, D. & W. van Logchem 2009. The mastodon of Milia: the longest tusks in the world. Deposits magazine, 28-32. Tsoukala E. 2000. Remains of a Pliocene Mammut borsoni (HAYS 1834), from Milia (Grevena, W. Macedonia, Greece). Annales de Paléontologie, 86 (3): 165-191, Paris. Figure 1. The excavation site in the sandpit of Milia: Consolidation of the tusks Figure 2. Preparation of the plaster jackets: The tusks were first covered with wet paper and then with Hessian cloth which was permeated in liquid plaster Figure 3a) The exposed tusks, 3b) The tusks in their plaster jackets, Figure 4. The display of the longest tusks in the world in the paleontological exhibiton of Milia 3a 3b 4