Posted on 06/17/2004 8:07:34 PM PDT by ckilmer
Public release date: 16-Jun-2004 Contact: Marie Gilbert marie.gilbert@uaf.edu 907-474-7412 University of Alaska Fairbanks
Mammoths stranded on Bering Sea island delayed extinction Fossil is first record in the Americas of a mammoth population to have survived the Pleistocene Woolly mammoths stranded on Pribilofs delayed extinction Fossil is first record in the Americas of a mammoth population to have survived the Pleistocene St. Paul, one of the five islands in the Bering Sea Pribilofs, was home to mammoths that survived the extinctions that wiped out mainland and other Bering Sea island mammoth populations.
In an article in the June 17, 2004 edition of the journal Nature, R. Dale Guthrie, professor emeritus at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, says that when mammoths on the mainland of Alaska and other Bering Sea islands died out during the extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene era (about 11,000 years ago) those on the Pribilofs survived and new radiocarbon dates show how.
It was a matter of being in the right place at the right time and the mammoth tooth fossil that demonstrates Guthrie's point is the first record in the Americas of a mammoth population surviving the Pleistocene.
"During the last glacial maximum, when the sea level was about 120 meters below its current level, what are now the Pribilofs were simply uplands connected to the mainland by a large, flat plain," Guthrie said.
Using accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) radiocarbon dating, bathymetric (water depth) plots, and sea transgression rates from the Bering Sea, Guthrie found that the mammoths became stranded on the Pribilofs about 13,000 years ago during the Holocene sea level rise after the last glacial maximum.
"Woolly mammoths became extinct on the mainland about 11,500 radiocarbon years ago," Guthrie said. At that time St. Lawrence Island was part of the Alaska mainland and presumably subject to the same extinction pressures as the mainland, but St. Paul had been an island for about 1,500 years.
"Radiocarbon-dated samples from St. Lawrence Island show similar dates of extinction to the mainland," Guthrie said, "but a sample from St. Paul dates to only 7,908 radiocarbon years old, into the mid-Holocene, which is much later."
The mammoths were able to survive on St. Paul so long as the island provided enough grazing forage and there were sufficient numbers of animals to prevent inbreeding pressures, Guthrie said, and at its present size of 36 square miles is too small to sustain a permanent mammoth population. St. Paul became that size about 5,000 years ago, so mammoths likely became extinct prior to that time.
St. Paul lies about 300 miles west of the Alaska mainland, and 750 air miles west of Anchorage.
### Contact information:
R. Dale Guthrie, professor emeritus Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 907-479-6034, ffrdg@uaf.edu
Marie Gilbert, publications and information coordinator, Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 907-474-7412, marie.gilbert@uaf.edu.
PDF of Guthrie's Nature article, "Radiocarbon evidence of mid-Holocene mammoths stranded on an Alaskan Bering Sea island" and an image of Dale Guthrie holding a mammoth molar are available by contacting Marie Gilbert, 907-474-7412, marie.gilbert@uaf.edu.
That was in the Channel Islands, off the coast of Santa Barbara.
I believe the same thing happened on Islands off of the coast of California.
Bad math. A species may have a founding individual who is an ancestor of every member of the species, but not necessarily a "founding pair" who are the ONLY ancestors of the species alive at the time. The founding individual may carry a mutation characteristic to the new species, which every member of the species has, but MANY other individuals alive at the time of the founding individual could still contribute to the gene pool of the species. That is because the SPECIATION (reproductive isolation from the predecessor species) doesn't occur at the time of the founding individual, but later.
There's got to be one turtle on the bottom.
Simple tautology by way of deduction.
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Fossil tusks of the mammoth - an extinct elephant - were found in northern Siberia and brought southward to markets at a very early time, possibly in the days of Pliny in the first century of the present era. The Chinese excelled in working delicate designs in the ivory, much of which they obtained from the north...
High in the north above Siberia, six hundred miles inside the Polar Circle, in the Arctic Ocean lie the Liakhov Islands. Liakhov was a hunter who, in the days of Catherine II, ventured to these islands and brought back the report that they abounded in mammoths' bones.
"Such was the enormous quantity of mammoths' remains that it seemed...that the island was actually composed of the bones and tusks of elephants, cemented together by icy sand."
The New Siberian Islands, discovered in 1805 and 1806, as well as the islands of Stolbovoi and Belkov to the west, present the same picture. "The soil of these desolate islands is absolutely packed full of the bones of elephants and rhinoceroses in astonishing numbers. These island were full of mammoth bones..."
quotes from "The Ivory Islands in the Arctic Ocean"
Journal of the Philosophical Society of Great Britain, XII (1910)
from Earth In Upheaval. by Immanuel Velikovsky.
(The polar islands are frozen for ten months of the year. What did the mammoth and the rhino's eat before they decided to lie down and die, I wonder?)
The polar islands are frozen for ten months of the year. What did the mammoth and the rhino's eat before they decided to lie down and die, I wonder?Buttercups. ;')
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