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Posted on 05/29/2026 3:50:47 PM PDT by Libloather
Is it free woolly?
Scientists were flabbergasted after discovering that the mammoth backbones that had been housed in an Alaskan museum for 70 years actually belonged to a whale, per a study published in the Journal of Quaternary Science.
This archaeological case of mistaken identity began way back in the 1950s, when archaeologist Otto Geist happened upon some bones while traveling through the Alaskan interior, roughly 10 miles North of Fairbanks in a region formerly known as Beringia, The Smithsonian Magazine reported.
He assumed the remnants, a pair of growth plates, belonged to the plush pachyderm mammoth based on their size and the fact that they were found in a region known for producing megafauna fossils.
The area had previously yielded the remains of mammoths, bison and other creatures dating to the Late Pleistocene.
Geist subsequently transported the items to the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North.
They remained archived there for seven decades under the wrong label until an investigation by the institution blew the lid off this whale of a “tail.”
Through radiocarbon dating, the museum determined that the backbone fossils were between 2,000 and 3,000 years old. That was far too young for a mammoth, which went extinct 10,000 years ago — although some populations held out for 6,000 more years.
If the bones did belong to the tufty tusker, they’d be by far the youngest fossils ever found, wrote University of Alaska Fairbanks biogeochemist Matthew Wooller and his team in the study.
Another peculiarity? Carbon and nitrogen analyses revealed that the lusciously locked landlubbers subsisted on marine organisms.
Hoping to solve this paleontological caper, the fossil sleuths conducted DNA testing on the remains, only to discover that they belonged to two different species of whales: a minke whale and a North Pacific right whale.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
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Let’s not be L7.
Believe the experts, heretics....
“That was far too young for a mammoth, which went extinct 10,000 years ago — although some populations held out for 6,000 more years.”
LOL! WTF!?
So when the NY Post recruits for reporters/writers, does the ad include “only idiots need apply”?
I am trying to figure out whale bones fossilized in a location so they could be confused with mammoth bones.
/bad collection and classification of bones down by the sea shore after selling she shells?
One of those times when the old adage, never have an archaeologist to do a paleontologists’s job, really applies.
[Captain Kirk] "I think he did a little too much LDS."
“Titleist?”
He wasn’t a Marine Biologist..........😎
I was referring to the article, not to your comment. It is hard to convey that in a post.
I was amazed at the stacks of Woolly Mammoth tusks at the old gold mining sites in Alaska.
Oh heck. Go ahead and clone them with elephants anyway.
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