If you found yourself standing in Alaska during the last ice age, chances are you would meet a woolly mammoth on the move.They analysed the tusk's chemical signatures to chart the mammoth's movements over its 28-year lifeBut was this shaggy beast taking a quick stroll or a long hike? Was it alone, or travelling in a herd?An international team of scientists has unravelled the travel diary of a woolly mammoth, stored in its 17,000-year-old tusk.
“It’s filling in these little jigsaw pieces about the ecology that can help us eventually understand what caused these animals to go extinct.” Like the rings of a tree, a mammoth's tusks contain growth bands that hold a goldmine of information about its daily life. The researchers sliced the 1.7-metre tusk into small sections to take a closer look at these isotopes using a mass spectrometer.
This suggested that the young animal didn't venture out too much and spent most of its days hanging out in the lower Yukon River basin in central Alaska.
Always wondered what use were tusks that curled back on themselves.
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Source: SkyNewsAust - 🏆 7. / 78 Read more »