Scientists Tracked the Movements of a 17,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth

November 9, 2023 8:10 PM

How Scientists Tracked the Movements of a 17,000-Year-Old Woolly Mammoth [Smithsonian magazine online]. Isotopes tell the epic tale of one ancient mammal’s odyssey across Alaska.
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (14 comments total)

There's just no privacy anymore, is there? If it's not cookies or cell tower data, it's isotopes....

(this is actually pretty cool science)
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:26 PM on November 9, 2023 [5 favorites]

Thanks for posting this, a super article to read. I invested a spring & summer in Alaska years ago and discovored basically what I do now for a living - landscape and ecology - and I devour great articles on the state.

And yes stable isotopes enable us to ask some very strange questions, and develop some amazing answers to ancient things.
posted by unearthed at 12:36 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

That was a fascinating read.
posted by third word on a random page at 2:45 AM on November 10, 2023

I thinking "it's poop! They tracked it with poop!" and then i read the article. It wasn't poop. I am subtly disappointed.
posted by seanmpuckett at 4:57 AM on November 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

Wonderful. Thanks!
posted by SoberHighland at 6:36 AM on November 10, 2023

It is interesting that the twice the circumference of the earth peregrinations of one mammoth living 17,000 years ago were revealed by the details of strontium values of the bones of 162 modern day Alaskan voles and rodents who probably wandered around in areas of no more than a city block each. As La Rochefoucauld once wrote, To understand matters rightly we should understand their details; and as that knowledge is almost infinite, our knowledge is always superficial and imperfect. In this case, enough of such superficial and imperfect details enmass told his story. May wonders never cease.
posted by y2karl at 8:58 AM on November 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Some of the areas aren't connected to other areas. I assume Kik was a really good jumper or had a hot air balloon.
posted by kirkaracha at 9:08 AM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Well, he did starve to death after all. Hard to measure the areas where he didn’t eat.
posted by y2karl at 9:14 AM on November 10, 2023

Vole-based strontium maps, who knew?
posted by cron at 12:55 PM on November 10, 2023

Also, Beringian lions, WTF?
posted by cron at 12:55 PM on November 10, 2023

"Vole-based strontium maps" would be a good username
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:05 PM on November 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Also, Beringian lions, WTF?

...Another interesting ice age lion puzzle is about what these large cats looked like. Paintings by ice age people in Chauvet Cave in France and others in Europe consistently depict lions without manes. These paintings are considered very accurate, lifelike representations of how lions looked and how they behaved. One painting shows a maneless, male lion standing beside a female in a posture related to mating. To date, this is our best evidence that the ice age lions were maneless.

Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre: Beringian Lion

Interesting to note that, after all that text, the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre depicts their eponymous lion with a mane. This would appear to be, deservedly this time, another one of those Blame [at least someone in] Canada occasions.
posted by y2karl at 2:57 PM on November 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Some of the areas aren't connected to other areas

I assume those are vole-less areas; maybe they needed to build some sort of shrew-based strontium map to fill in the blanks
posted by AzraelBrown at 3:03 PM on November 10, 2023

In other little critter news of late, I was impressed to find the yellow rumped leaf eared mouse, which ranges from sea level in Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina to the summit of Llullaillaco, a 6,739m*-high volcano straddling the border of Chile and Argentina. Now there's the highest living mammal what gets around. On a diet of that usually includes herbivory, insectivory, granivory, and frugivory at that. For the most part. I would assume the individual found on Llullaillaco was eating bugs. If not conscious sentient dirt.
Frugivory... my vocabulary was expanded today.
*Also, according to the Imperial system, 6,739 meters is 4.187 miles high. Three quarters of Mt. Everest in altitude, in other words. Where the amount of atmospheric oxygen available is 44% of that at sea level. One gets short of breath just reading that.

posted by y2karl at 4:00 PM on November 10, 2023