"Mammoth"

A steel tusk that seems to plunge into the ground and surface again stands beside a walkway at Central Washington University in Ellensburg. Mammoth, by the Israeli-American sculptor Ilan Averbuch, dates from 2018 and was acquired for the Washington State Arts Commission's collection in partnership with the university. It stands outside the Samuelson Building, home to the departments of Computer Science, Mathematics and Information Technology.

The idea comes from a fossil. In 2005 a trackhoe working on private land in the Wenas Creek Valley near Selah struck a large bone, and a university team led by archaeologist Pat Lubinski went on to excavate the site. ArtsWA says the sculpture was inspired by a femoral bone fragment of the Wenas Creek Mammoth held in the university's collection, while the university's project page describes the original find as a left humerus. Averbuch said: "The bone stands alone without its body, asking us to use our imagination to reconstruct its skeleton." A 2026 university news item describes the animals as Columbian mammoths from about 17,000 years ago.