The Cohoes Mastodont was discovered during excavation for Harmony Mill #3 in 1866, and the mill was sometimes called the Mastodon Mill because of the find. After all the bones were recovered, they were exhibited at the Harmony Mills Office, where hundreds of people saw them, and the discovery became a nationwide sensation that drew considerable press coverage and controversy. In 1867, the skeleton was transferred to state ownership and exhibited in the State Cabinet of Natural History in Albany, and it was later displayed there with a furry replica in the State Education building in Albany. In life, the mastodont stood nearly nine feet tall, weighed five or six tons, and had tusks more than four feet long. In 1976, the skeleton was disassembled and placed in storage while the replica moved to the Cohoes Public Library. In the mid-1990s, the eleven thousand year old skeleton was carefully cleaned, rearticulated, and studied, yielding more clues about the life and times of this ancient resident of Cohoes, and it now stands in the lobby of the New York Sate Museum in Albany.