14,000 years ago, woolly mammoths roamed Canada, Alaska and Siberia. Then they disappeared. Now, researchers are piecing together their story. And it’s all thanks to one mammoth, her herd and a tusk.
An international team of researchers from McMaster University, University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Ottawa has tracked and documented the movements and genetic connections of a female woolly mammoth that roamed the earth more than 14,000 years ago.
She travelled hundreds of kilometres through northwestern Canada and Alaska over the course of her lifetime, which ended when she encountered some of the earliest people to have traveled across the Bering Land Bridge.
The last remaining woolly mammoths lived alongside the region’s first peoples for at least 1,000 years, but little is known about how the mammoths moved across a landscape increasingly populated by people and whether those movements made them more vulnerable to hunting.
The mammoth at the centre of this study, named Élmayuujey’eh by the Healy Lake Village Council, was discovered at Swan Point, the earliest archaeological site in Alaska, which also contained remains of a juvenile and a baby mammoth. Mammoth remains have also been found at three other archaeological sites within 10 km of Swan Point.
Researchers conducted a detailed isotopic analysis of a complete tusk and genetic analyses of remains of many other individual mammoths to piece together their subject’s movements and relationships to other mammoths at the same site and in the vicinity. They determined that the Swan Point area was likely a meeting ground for at least two closely related, but distinct matriarchal herds.
The findings have been published in the journal Science Advances.
Karen Spaleta, Deputy Director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility and co-author of the study takes a sample from a mammoth tusk found at the Swan Point archaeological site in Interior Alaska. (Credit: University of Alaska Fairbanks)
“This is a fascinating story that shows the complexity of life and behaviour of mammoths, for which we have very little insight,” says evolutionary geneticist Hendrik Poinar, director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre who led the team that sequenced the mitochondrial genomes of eight woolly mammoths found at Swan Point and other nearby sites to determine if and how they were related.
Researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks performed isotopic analyses of the tusk. Mammoth tusks grew like tree trunks, with thin layers marking steady growth and isotopes from different elements — oxygen and strontium, for example — provided information about the subject’s movement.
The female mammoth was approximately 20 years old when she died, having spent much of her life in a relatively small area of the Yukon. Researchers report that as she grew older, she travelled over 1000 km in just three years, settling in interior Alaska and dying near a closely related baby and juvenile, for which she may have been the matriarchal lead.
Mammoths are presumed to behave much like modern elephants, with females and juveniles living in close-knit matriarchal herds and mature males traveling alone or in looser male groups, often with larger home ranges than the females.
Researchers say using multiple forms of analysis, as in this study, allows them to make inferences about the behaviour of extinct mammoths.
The McMaster team extracted and analyzed ancient DNA from the tusk of Élmayuujey’eh, which revealed the mammoth was closely related to the other mammoths from the same site and more distantly related to others from a nearby site called Holzman.
Early human populations, with a deep understanding of mammoths and the technology to hunt them, took advantage of mammoth habitats, using scavenged and hunted remains as raw materials for tools, the researchers report.
In addition to the direct impact of hunting on mammoth populations, human activity and settlements may have also indirectly affected mammoth populations by curtailing their movements and their access to preferred grazing areas.
Sina Beleka, a post-doctoral researcher at the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre and co-author of the study examines a sample. (Sidney Roth/McMaster University)
“For early people in Alaska, those localities were important for observation and appreciation, and also a source of potential food,” says Poinar.
The collected data suggests that people structured their seasonal hunting camps based on where mammoths gathered and may have played an indirect role in their local extinction in Alaska, which was compounded by a rapidly changing climate and changing vegetation.
Such deprivations did not appear to have affected the subject mammoth, though.
“She was a young adult in the prime of life. Her isotopes showed she was not malnourished and that she died in the same season as the seasonal hunting camp at Swan Point where her tusk was found,” said senior author Matthew Wooller, director of the Alaska Stable Isotope Facility and a professor at UAF’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, who conducted the work with Audrey Rowe, a PhD student and lead author of the paper.
“This is more than looking at stone tools or remains and trying to speculate. This analysis of lifetime movements can really help with our understanding of how people and mammoths lived in these areas,” says Tyler Murchie, a recent postdoctoral researcher at McMaster. He conducted the ancient DNA analysis with Sina Baleka.
“We can continue to significantly expand our genetic understanding of the past, and to address more nuanced questions of how mammoths moved, how they were related to one another and how that all connects to ancient people.”
The research was funded in part by the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
