Roughly the mass of a modern African elephant, the woolly mammoth evolved some 400,000 years ago in Siberia from the steppe mammoth widespread on that continent. Ultimately, these creatures spread westward into Europe and eastward into North America via the Beringian land bridge that once connected modern-day Russia and Alaska.

This specimen is a fragment of a woolly mammoth muscle tissue, radiocarbon dated to 19,551 years old. The specimen comes from a well-preserved wooly mammoth leg discovered near the Indigirka River in Siberia, Russia.

With twin, serrated, canine teeth measuring 8 inches (20 cm) and backed by 600 pounds (275 kg) of muscle, Smilodon fatalis is one of the most iconic animals of the Pleistocene Epoch. While the look of this stocky animal gave rise to its popular name, saber-tooth (or sabertooth) tigers are only distantly related to modern big cats.

This specimen is a fragment of a Smilodon fatalis femur recovered on private land in Florida. This species of Smilodon ranged across North America and into the western half of South America for roughly 1.5 million years, finally succumbing with other megafauna during the Quaternary Extinction Event 10,000 years ago.

Stones were our ancestors' first tools—in fact, they may even predate our species. Members of the primate family have been creating stone tools for millions of years. This specimen is a fragment of a tool created by a Neanderthal, an extinct subspecies of archaic humans.

Our Neanderthal Stone Tool Specimens from the collection of a retired French postman. He spent decades traversing rural France, collecting and cataloging Mousterian stone tools. The tools have been validated by experts in the field, with estimated ages between 140,000 and 70,000 years old.

The dire wolf was one of the most successful predators of the late Pleistocene Epoch. Ranging from Alaska to Bolivia, this muscular carnivore fed on a wide variety of large prey including bison, camels, horses, mastodons, mammoths, and even giant ground sloths.

This massive canine was truly a force to be reckoned with, weighing over 150 pounds and with a bite force stronger than any modern species. This adaptation made it perfect at taking down megafauna herbivores but also gave it an edge when fighting against its biggest competition: the saber-toothed cat, Smilodon.

The specimen is a fragment of a dire wolf jaw found in Florida on private land. During the Pleistocene, this region was a savannah ecosystem filled with numerous large mammals.

The La Brea Tar Pits are among the most well-known petroleum seeps in the world. Over millennia, such seeps can become lake-like formations and trap unwary wildlife. Excavated animal remains at La Brea comprise nearly 700 different species, some dating back 40,000 years to the Late Pleistocene.

Crafted here at Mini Museum, this resin-infused specimen was created using material from a selection of mined La Brea Tar Pit material which contained the remains of coyotes, dung beetles, rabbits, and even a bald eagle.