Standing high above the highway in Stewiacke, Nova Scotia, is Marvin the Mastodon, a life-sized replica of a prehistoric giant that once roamed the region. Measuring 14 feet tall and 22 feet long, the enormous statue was erected at Mastodon Ridge in January 1995 to commemorate a remarkable discovery made just a few years earlier.

In 1991, while excavating a sinkhole at the National Gypsum Quarry near Milford, an excavator operator noticed a tusk and bones protruding from the earth. Further excavation uncovered the partial skeletons of two mastodons, an adult and a juvenile, along with the remains of numerous other plants and animals that had accumulated in the sinkhole over thousands of years.

Scientific analysis suggests that the adult mastodon was a male, approximately 22 years old, that lived around 80,000 years ago. Researchers believe the enormous animal may have been travelling through a boggy wetland, feeding on vegetation, when the ground suddenly gave way beneath its weight.…