By looking at the Strontium values in certain parts of the mammoth tusk—such as those that formed when the mammoth was an infant, a juvenile and an adult—and comparing those values to an isotope map of the ancient Arctic, the researchers were able to outline the life of this ancient beast.
The resulting map covers a significant swath of ancient Alaska and northwestern Canada. When the mammoth was very young, the paleontologists propose, the mammoth lived in the interior of Alaska around the Yukon River basin. By the time the mammoth was two years old, though, he was moving north to spend more time between the Alaska and Brooks mountain ranges.
But after his sixteenth birthday, something changed for the mammoth. This finding tracks with the identification of the mammoth as a male. In modern elephant species, adult males often leave the matriarchal herds they grew up in and either become solitary or hang out with small groups of other males. He seemed to hang out in an area north of the Brooks Range and no longer ventured far and wide over the ancient tundra.
And he probably starved there. Other isotopes, primarily oxygen, indicate that the mammoth perished during the late winter or early spring, marked by little food and biting cold. Something to chew on If mammoths were similar to elephants in their eating habits, they were very remarkable beasts.
Consider the following facts about modern elephants:. Since most mammoths were larger than modern elephants, these numbers must have been higher for mammoths! So, though primarily a grazer, the Columbian mammoth did a bit of browsing as well.
What about mastodons? The American Mastodon, Mammut americanum. While mammoths had ridged molars, primarily for grazing on grasses, mastodon molars had blunt, cone-shaped cusps for browsing on trees and shrubs. Mastodons were smaller than mammoths, reaching about ten feet at the shoulder, and their tusks were straighter and more parallel. Mastodons were about the size of modern elephants, though their bodies were somewhat longer and their legs shorter.
Consider the following facts about modern elephants: Spend 16 to 18 hours a day either feeding or moving toward a source of food or water. Consume between to pounds 60 to kg of food each day. Woolly mammoths were around 13 feet 4 meters tall and weighed around 6 tons 5. Some of the hairs on woolly mammoths could reach up to 3 feet 1 m long, according to National Geographic. Though woolly mammoths are known for living in the frigid planes of the Arctic, mammoths actually arrived there from a much warmer home.
Research by a team from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, found that the ancestors of both the mammoth and Asian elephant originated in Africa 6.
They seemed to have stayed there for about 4 million years before moving up into Southern Europe. Then, about a million years later, they spread out even further to the area that is now called Siberia and the northern plains of Canada. During this time, "a cataclysmic event occurred on Earth — the Ice Ages," said Kevin Campbell of the University of Manitoba research team. Because many mammoth corpses are so well preserved, scientist have been able to extract DNA from the animals.
One particularly good specimen was a female mammoth in her 50s, nicknamed Buttercup , that lived about 40, years ago. In theory, this DNA could be used to clone woolly mammoths, bringing them back from extinction.
In fact, there is a project called The Woolly Mammoth Revival that is working toward making this idea a reality.
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