Jumbo the elephant was killed by a train in 1885; his skeleton, hide, heart and ashes went to four different owners

In 1882 the London Zoo's superintendent, Abraham Bartlett, sold Jumbo to P.T. Barnum for 2,000 pounds (US$10,000). A lawsuit claimed the sale broke zoo bylaws, the zoo tried to back out, and the court upheld the sale. Barnum recovered the price in three weeks at Madison Square Garden, and the 31-week season earned about $1.75 million. On 15 September 1885 a freight train hit Jumbo, aged 24, at a rail yard in St. Thomas, Ontario, as he was led to a boxcar. Barnum then split the body. The skeleton went to the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where it remains. Taxidermists William Critchley and Carl Akeley mounted the hide, and Barnum gave it to Tufts University. Fire destroyed the hide in April 1975. Ashes believed to be from the fire are kept in a peanut butter jar in the Tufts athletic director's office^†. The heart was sold to Burt Green Wilder of Cornell University and was lost by the 1940s^†. The tail is held in the Tufts archives. Whether the skeleton was donated or sold is not settled in the sources found^†.