Scientists analyzed the chemical composition of a woolly mammoth's tusk to determine how long it had passed in its lifetime.
It turned out that the mammoth “wound” about 70 thousand kilometers – enough to go around the Earth at the equator almost twice.
Woolly mammoths are relatives of today's elephants that inhabited northern latitudes in the Pleistocene.
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The study helps to understand how mobile these ancient creatures were.
“It's unclear if this was a seasonal migration, but this mammoth has traveled a fair distance,” said co-author Dr. Matthew Woeller of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. “In different periods of his life, he visited many parts of Alaska, which is quite surprising if you imagine how large this territory is.”
Mammoth tusks resemble tree rings – in the sense that they can be used to read the history of the animal's life.
In addition, some chemical elements trapped in the tusks during the life of the animal can serve as geographical indicators of the places in which it has been.
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According to these data, the researchers found out the travel history of the male mammoth, which lived 17 thousand years ago in Alaska. His remains were found near the Brooks Ridge in the north of the state.
“From birth to death, they kind of keep a diary, and it is written in their fangs,” says Pat Druckenmiller, director of the Museum of the North at the University of Alaska, who also took part in the study. the life of the individual. “
Mammoth tusks grew in layers throughout the life of the animal. When cut to length, the tusk looks like nested ice cream cones, describing the chronology of their owner's life.
The researchers got an idea of the mammoth's journey by studying the various isotopes of the chemical elements strontium and oxygen contained in a one and a half meter tusk. Then they were compared with maps predicting the distribution of isotopes in Alaska.
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It turned out that in 28 years of life on the planet, the mammoth covered 70 thousand km. For comparison, the length of the equator is 40 thousand km.
The study also points to possible reasons for the extinction of mammoths. For animals that inhabited such large areas, the invasion of forests on grassy plains – the natural habitat of mammoths – by the end of the last ice age presented additional difficulties. It became more difficult for mammoths to get food, but predators began to hunt them more often.
The work was published in the journal Science .
