Scientists have studied the movement of the woolly mammoth by the remains of minerals on its tusks
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Scientists have studied the layers of minerals left on the tusks of a woolly mammoth that lived more than 14,000 years ago.
They found out where these huge animals lived and why they might have died out, according to a study published in the journal Science Advances, writes The New York Times.
Researchers say woolly mammoths had the same tusks as elephants. Every day, a thin cone-shaped layer of minerals accumulated on the tip of their tusks, which remained even after the animal’s death.
Researchers began analyzing this chemical “record” back in the 1980s, when they studied how mammoth diets changed with the seasons.
| Photo: Pixelchaos/Depositphotos |
Recently, scientists decided to track how animals moved during their lives.
They measured strontium, an element found in small amounts in plants that animals eat. That is, if a mammoth spent the day grazing where there is a large amount of strontium in the soil, then a layer with a high content of this element was formed on its tusk.
In 2021, scientists analyzed the tusk of a mammoth nicknamed Kick, who lived 17,000 years ago. He died outside the Arctic Circle at the age of 28. Scientists cut one of its tusks with a band saw.
They found out that Kik grew up far from the northern regions where he died. When he was a cub, he traveled around eastern Alaska with his herd. As an adult, he migrated through central Alaska, and spent the last 18 months of his life on the north side of the Brooks Range, where he probably died of starvation.
In 2023, the same team of scientists began studying the tusk of a female woolly mammoth, named Elma. She lived 14 thousand years ago.
Scientists found out that the animal was born on the territory of Lake Yukon in northwestern Canada and lived there for more than 10 years, and then migrated to Alaska. They believe that Elma usually kept to the high mountain meadows and gradually moved to the east.
Scientists assumed that the migration was due to the exhaustion of resources, so the animals looked for a better area to live from time to time.
Read also: Scientists want to “revive” the extinct woolly mammoth. And elephants can help
The remains of the mammoth Elma were found in a hunting and fishing camp. Scientists assume that she became a victim of hunting. Interestingly, the bones were found at the oldest archaeological site in Alaska.
After humans arrived in Alaska, they interbred with woolly mammoths for about a thousand years before the animals became extinct there.
Woolly mammoths also disappeared from Siberia, surviving for several thousand years on remote islands. Scientists have long debated whether climate change or humans caused the extinction.
As the Ice Age came to an end, woolly mammoths like Elma and Kik became easier to find because they had fewer areas to graze.
According to University of Alaska graduate student Audrey Rowe, this combination of climate change and hunting may explain why woolly mammoths disappeared from Alaska.
“In Alaska, mammoths would have died out regardless of whether humans hunted them or not. If anything, people just hastened their deaths“, she assumed.
Read also: In Florida, a diver found the jaw of a mammoth over 10,000 years old
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