Mammoth Mummies Mysteries

Scientific American 'blogs ^ | December 8, 2011 | David Bressan

[SunkenCiv]

Natural mummies can be preserved in bog deposits, in tar pits, deep inside caves, glacier ice or permafrost -- an environment too cold for an effective decomposition of organic matter.

At least 16 species of ice age mammals have been found mummified complete or partially: woolly mammoth, Shasta-, Jefferson´s- and Patagonian ground sloth, woolly rhinoceros, Yukon horse, steppe bison, helmeted muskox, Harrington´s mountain goat, caribou, giant moose, black-footed ferret, collared pika, snowshoe hare, arctic ground squirrel and vole. The ground sloths and mountain goats were found inside of caves. The woolly rhinoceros and mammoth of Starunia (Ukraine) became "pickled" in salty groundwater and coated by natural occurring mineral waxes.

Some of the best preserved and oldest natural mummies were found in thawing permafrost in Siberia, Alaska and Canada: like the 40.000 year old Russian mammoth calf "Dima" (discovered in 1977) or the 36.000 year old bison "Blue Babe" (discovered in 1979) from Fairbanks (Alaska) and a 40.000 year old black-footed ferret from the Yukon territory. Other exceptionally well preserved mammoth calves are "Lyuba" (2007), the 50.000 years old male "Khroma" (2009) and a new described calf found in the Siberian region of Yukaghir.

[Sherman Logan]

"Anyway, the warming of the Canadian Arctic due anthropogenic climate change..."

After reading that I could take nothing he wrote seriously.

You are misreading him. In this sentence he is describing the plot of a movie. He may very well believe in AGW, but you can't deduce it from his description of a movie.

The notion of early man as a Typhoid Mary causing mass extinctions is a new one to me. But it sounds like a load of bull. As the author says, disease organisms are usually too exquisitely adapted to their hosts to jump to multiple species.

[Bernard Marx]

I admit I quickly skim-read and could be guilty as charged.

I agree that early man and his diseases causing animal extinctions is BS. Something not yet understood happened to cause the Pleistocene megafauna extinctions. Eventually we'll probably figure it out but pontificating on the basis of present evidence is pointless.

[Sherman Logan]

The hypothesis of an unidentified hyperdisease killing entire species was proposed in 1997 after the first epidemics of Ebola in 1976-1979 and 1994-1996.

Silly scientists.

The Ebola outbreaks themselves showed why this scenario is highly implausible. The organisms caused extreme death rates in a short time, but in the process "burned through" their available hosts and then, as an inevitable results, died themselves. This is despite the fact that the areas in question had only minimal medical resources.

With modern human technology, a highly deadly disease could spread fast enough to stay ahead of its own killing of its hosts, but probably not otherwise.

Also, I can see how humans could pick up diseases from the mammoths they killed, but fail to see how mammoths could be infected by humans. Surely they weren't in any kind of close contact on a regular basis. Which is how we acquired most of our infectious diseases by transmission from our domesticates.

[Fred Nerks]

Siberian mammoth tusks on the ivory floor at the London Docks.

© National Maritime Museum, London

Repro ID: H6324

Description: Dock officials check a consignment of ivory at London Docks. The ivory warehouse at Wapping was one of the most dazzling sights of the port. The ivory was weighed, examined, classified and laid out for the inspection of the buyers who in due time would arrange for it to be transformed into piano keys, billiard balls and countless other luxury items.

Creator: Illustrated London News. Date: 1873 Credit line: National Maritime Museum, London

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