Learn about the Ice Age, mammoths at Sycamore museum

Some 15,000 years ago during the Ice Age, much of North America lay under a huge glacier. Mammoths, saber tooth cats and cave lions roamed the earth.

"Walking in the Footprints of Mammoths" will be the topic presented at the Kids Science Series at the Midwest Museum of Natural History at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18.

Barbara Converse of the Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation will begin her presentation with a video and discussion of glaciations of the Midwest and then relate the life of a mammoth on the edge of the Wisconsin glacier. The audience will learn about hiking the Ice Age Trail today, what they can discover, and how they can help to maintain and build the Ice Age National Scenic Trail.

Converse, of Whitewater, Wis., is a 20-year member if the Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation, former treasurer, present publicity assistant, and winner of a National Park Service volunteer in the Parks Award. She and her husband, Jerome, are segment maintainers of a mile-and-a-half of the trail as it traverses a small winding creek and a lowland prairie. The chapter of the Ice Age Trail to which they belong is responsible for 19 miles of trail in Walworth and Jefferson counties. The trail itself traverses 1,200 miles of Wisconsin landscape.

Kids Science Series programs are targeted to kids of all ages, from elementary-school age and beyond. "Mammoths" is included in museum admission.

The Midwest Museum of Natural History is at 425 W. State St., Sycamore. For details, call (815) 895-9777 or visit mmnh.org.