Client
Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle
Location
Paris
Dates
June 2023
Services
Restauration and mountmaking
About the exhibition
The Durfort mammoth is an emblematic specimen of the Galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie Comparée, where it has been on display for 125 years. Marked by the ravages of time, the skeleton needed urgent restoration if it was to continue to amaze the public.
Discovered in 1869 in Durfort-et-Saint- Martin-de-Sossenac, in the Gard department, this southern mammoth lived between 700,000 and 1.2 million years BC. Acquired by the Muséum in 1872, it was exhibited in the Galerie de Paléontologie et d'Anatomie Comparée in 1898. After more than a century on display, the giant was suffering from serious deterioration, making its restoration urgent and necessary.
Selected by the Museum following a call for tenders, Aïnu worked from June 2022 to June 2023 on this large-scale project to restore the Durfort mammoth.
Each part of the mammoth was treated with care: first cleaned to remove old wax or varnish, dried and blackened, the bones were then consolidated in depth, while fractures were glued back together and cracks filled. The restored specimen was then placed back on part of the original pedestal, which was also renovated. The latter, a nineteenth-century feat, is made of metal collars and claws that encircle the bones without perforating them: a first at the time for a skeleton mounted and presented to the public.
Curators
Cécile Colin Fromont
Régis Debruyne
Gaël Clément
Photos : ©CHIA Ming Chien
