New Discovery Hints That Mammoth Survived Ice Age

Submitted by owenjarus on Wed, 12/16/2009 - 17:05

News is breaking this morning from Alaska which says that Woolly Mammoths survived the last ice age. The discovery was made by an international team of scientist, led by Professor Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen.

And, not only did they survive it, they may have lived as recently as ca. 5600 BC. The findings contradict the idea that a comet blew up over North America, 12,900 years ago, wiping out this species in a very short period of time.

This comet theory is important for archaeology as it explains why human artefacts started to change during this period (ie - spearpoints becoming smaller to hunt small game).

Now, here`s how they pulled it off. It wasn`t through skeletons, it was through coprolites – also known as mammoth poop.

In this case the team the team found it preserved in a layer of ancient permafrost, near the Yukon River. Alaska is very cold and much of the ground is frozen year-round. The layer the team dug into is dated to between 10,500 and 7,600 years ago.

So What Does This Mean in Terms of Ancient Humans?

First of all it makes the comet theory difficult to reconcile. If a comet blew up over North America (Bruce Willis style) how could a mammoth population in Alaska have survived it for so long? Scientists will have to explore other ideas as to how iridium and microdiamonds, the tell tale signs of a comet explosion, ended up in North America 12,900 years ago.

-A few months back Heritage Key broke the news that two mastodon tusks have been found that bear possible evidence of this comet explosion. The two tusks have magnetite crystals on their top, but not on their bottom. They both date back 12,900 years ago. The idea is that the comet exploded and the debris landed on top of these animals.

The crystals are undergoing tests to see if they are extraterrestrial in origin. It will be some time before we hear back on the results – but I daresay that this study has taken on some new importance.

It also doesn’t make sense that human hunters ate up this population shortly after they arrived. Alaska is first stop on the way into the New World. How could mammoth survive so late there? That is unless – brace yourself for this – humans didn’t go after them voraciously at all – leaving them more or less alone to hunt other wildlife.

I’m sceptical of the idea that mammoth could have survived to 5,600 BC – there are no bones that date to that time. It’s possible that the mammoth poop found in Alaska dates to earlier in this layer’s life (think ca. 8000 BC). The team acknowledges as such in a press release.

The results will be appearing soon in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. I checked just now and the paper is not up yet. However, in science, as in many endeavours, the press releases sometimes get a little ahead of the technical articles.