Looking Back: A mammoth moment

The life-sized female, who was given the name Mildred after a public competition that received over 1,300 votes in the summer of 2021, was inspired by a mammoth tooth in the natural history collection that was discovered at Yealm Bridge Cavern on the nearby Kitley Estate, Devon.

Mildred and the tooth can now ben seen in the natural history gallery, along with 3,000 other specimens including insects, taxidermy, minerals and skeletons.

Fossils show that woolly mammoths were roaming around Plymouth 35,000 years ago, alongside bears, cave lions, hyenas and woolly rhinos. They were a highly successful species for thousands of years, but they became extinct around 4,000 years ago as temperatures rose and humans hunted for meat, bones and fur. As a symbol of something our planet has lost, Mildred highlights both the brilliance and fragility of nature.

Mildred was constructed by Blue Rhino Studio, who are based in Minnesota, USA. The company specialises in interpretive design and artistic fabrication for visitor centres and museums around the world.

Like the majority of all large-scale sculptures created at Blue Rhino, her fabrication began with the production of a detailed clay model that captured her mass, pose, gesture and scale.

This painstaking process enabled the team to scrutinise and make adjustments to the design before she was sculpted at full-scale from fire retardant architectural foam and then sealed with a fibreglass resin.

One of the most challenging aspects was replicating her fur. Blue Rhino Studio had to carefully consider its colour, texture and direction and then applied it by hand from the feet up to create an amazingly realistic finish. Mildred was then disassembled into three sections and prepped for shipping. She arrived at Southampton docks and was then carefully transported to The Box where she's become a firm favourite with our visitors!

Come and see Mildred the woolly mammoth for yourselves in our natural history gallery. We're open 10am-5pm Tuesday-Sunday and selected bank holidays throughout the year. Entry to the gallery is free.