Kathleen Sierra leads a pack of preschoolers over to a 13-foot-tall fossil cast of a Columbian mammoth. The kids gawk and point at the giant beast that once roamed the California landscape more than half a million years ago.

Sierra, a retired science teacher, volunteers her time at the Fossil Discovery Center of Madera County in Chowchilla, which exhibits bones excavated locally and Pleistocene-era fossil replicas of creatures once indigenous to the area.

"It's great," she said. "They've done a good job. I think there's lots of future ahead. There's all kinds of new places to go with it. I'm hoping they're planning on bringing in new exhibits and rotating exhibits, so that there's more things to see each time you come."

The mammoth, the latest installment at the Discovery Center, received its official unveiling Friday night during a wine and hors d'oeuvres fund-raiser for the museum.

The mammoth exhibit was paid for by a $100,000 donation from local residents Gerald and Judith McDougal. Gerald is vice president of the board of the San Joaquin Valley Paleontology Foundation, the nonprofit that operates the Discovery Center.

"I've always been interested in paleontology all my life," he said. "I'm a retired engineer, so I just naturally migrated to this place. From an informational and educational standpoint, I feel it's important."

The center opened in 2010 and serviced about 100 school field trips last year, bringing in roughly 2,000 elementary students.

The Discovery Center was built after fossils were found in 1993 at the Madera County landfill in Fairmead. Since then, about 15,000 fossils have been recovered.

"They hit these things they thought they were old tree trunks," explained Blake Bufford, director of the Discovery Center. "But they were 35 feet below the surface. So, someone looked at it and said, 'This is a mammoth tusk.' "

Now community members are turning the find into an educational opportunity for the whole Valley, said Jarrod Lyman, director of media for the Yosemite Sierra Visitors Bureau.

"You can't show a kid a fossil and have them not get excited about that," he said. "What kid doesn't love seeing something like this? It's amazing.

"Even if you're not a kid, it really brings out the kid in you to come in here and see this massive fossil of this mammoth that towers over even elephants. It's incredible to think that these things once walked around here."

Reporter Joshua Emerson Smith can be reached at jsmith@mercedsunstar.com or (209) 385-2486.

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