Sugar, The Mastodon

Since the 1980s, the College’s Middletown campus has been the home of “Sugar,” a mastodon skeleton found in 1972 near the Warwick-Chester border that was donated to the people of Orange County by the New York State Archaeological Association. The Sugar Loaf mastodon (mastodon americanus) greets all students as they enter the Bio-Tech building’s main entrance.

The skeleton belonged to a 20-foot long male that possessed an unusual tusk in the lower jaw and stood almost nine feet tall at the pelvis. “Sugar” has been radiocarbon dated at 7910 B.C. (plus or minus 225 years).