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A quiet afternoon on a farm turned into a moment of prehistoric discovery. What this teen uncovered could rewrite part of ancient history. What began as a simple search for arrowheads on an Iowa farm turned into an extraordinary encounter with the past. A teenager’s unexpected discovery of a 34,000-year-old mastodon jaw is now capturing the attention of scientists and shedding new light on Ice Age life in North America. Chance Find Reveals Ancient Ice Age Resident The student was simply enjoying a day outdoors when he came across a large bone fragment partially embedded in the ground. Curious, he...

A woolly mouse, a breed created by scientists using genetic engineering. The development is a first step toward reviving a version of the extinct woolly mammoth. Colossal Biosciences Scientists have genetically engineered mice with some key characteristics of an extinct animal that was far larger — the woolly mammoth. This "woolly mouse" marks an important step toward achieving the researchers' ultimate goal — bringing a woolly mammoth-like creature back from extinction, they say. "For us, it's an incredibly big deal," says Beth Shapiro, chief science officer at Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas company trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth and other...

Circular mammoth bone structures have been recovered across western Russia and the Ukraine. Most have been dated to around ~26,000–14,000 cal BP (calibrated years before present) and are usually found along the Desna/Dnpr river systems."The circular mammoth bone structures are from the height of the last Ice Age, a period of intense cold, and are widely considered to have been dwellings for shelter during long, full glacial winter seasons or possibly year-round," explains Dr. Lorenzen, one of the study's researchers...However, precisely what they looked like is yet unknown...Previous radiocarbon dates indicate the site was likely built around 24,000–25,000 ya. Making...

Colossal, a leading Texas-based biosciences company working to combat environmental dangers and revive extinct species, has reached a new funding milestone that it says will accelerate its pioneering de-extinction efforts and advancements in genetic engineering. On Wednesday, the company announced it had secured $200 million in Series C funding led by TWG Global, bringing its valuation to $10.2 billion. Founded by entrepreneur Ben Lamm and geneticist Dr. George Church, Colossal Biosciences has quickly become a leader in developing technologies that aim to reverse species extinction using cutting-edge CRISPR technology. Since its launch in September 2021, the company has already achieved...

Researchers found direct evidence that Clovis people relied heavily on mammoths for food, using isotopic analysis to confirm 40% of a Clovis mother's diet came from mammoths. The study highlights how hunting large animals supported the Clovis people's mobility and rapid spread, while also contributing to the extinction of Ice Age megafauna...The study, featured on the Dec. 4 cover of the journal Science Advances, employed stable isotope analysis to reconstruct the diet of the mother of an infant found at a 13,000-year-old Clovis burial site in Montana. Previously, researchers inferred prehistoric diets primarily through indirect evidence, such as stone tools...

Ancient Greek authors believed that Mende was used as a base camp for giants before battle, and as palaeontologist Evangelia Tsoukala has been finding out, it's clear to see why.Unearthing The Bones of Greece's Ancient 'Giants' | 2:18BBC Timestamp | 784K subscribers | 9,562 views | September 19, 2024

The unmistakable work of prehistoric humans was found etched into the mammoth's hide. Yuka the mammoth may have been killed by cave lions. Image credit: Zhuravlev Andrey/Shutterstock.com Often hailed as the best-preserved woolly mammoth corpse ever discovered, the body of a young female specimen named Yuka has just yielded a staggering surprise. By analyzing cut marks on the animal's hide, researchers have now determined that the beast was butchered by humans 39,000 years ago, thus providing the earliest evidence for the presence of people in the Arctic. Discovered in 2010 in the extreme north of Siberia, Yuka is thought to...

You could never generate this amount of power yourself. Mammoth hunts would have been incredibly dangerous. Image credit: Esteban De Armas/Shutterstock.com North American hunter-gatherers may have developed an innovative method for killing Ice-Age megafauna like mammoths, according to the authors of a new study. Rather than throwing spears at their prey, members of the iconic Clovis culture might have used “braced shaft weapons”, or pikes, to inflict catastrophic injuries on their victims. “The key elements of the pike are a sharp tip for entering thick hide or armor and a long, sturdy shaft that could be braced in the ground...

Prehistoric humans hunt a woolly mammoth. More and more research shows that this species – and at least 46 other species of megaherbivores – were driven to extinction by humans. Credit: Engraving by Ernest Grise, photographed by William Henry Jackson. Courtesy Getty’s Open Content Program ================================================================== Researchers at Aarhus University have concluded that human hunting, rather than climate change, was the primary factor in the extinction of large mammals over the past 50,000 years. This finding is based on a review of over 300 scientific articles. Over the last 50,000 years, many large species, or megafauna, weighing at least 45...

A huge asteroid may have hit the Earth 12,800 years ago causing global climate change and extinction, according to new evidence found in South Africa. Scientists analysed ancient soil at a site called Wonderkrater and found high levels of platinum - which they say supports the The Younger Dryas Impact Hypothesis that a disintegrating meteor hit Earth and caused a mini ice age. The resulting ice age is believed by many scientists to have wiped out dozens of mammals species including the Mammoth and giant wildebeest and decimated the human population. Scientists believe 'platinum spikes' found in ancient soil samples...

Have the greenies ever heard of these crazy things called trees? First, the story, from a report out at The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday: In May this year, on the flat plains of an Icelandic geothermal reserve, a gigantic vacuum cleaner designed to suck planet-warming carbon dioxide out of the sky was switched on. The machine, called Mammoth, would not be entirely out of place on a Mad Max set. It will soon start extracting up to 36,000 tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere a year to be fossilised, locking it safely and permanently underground. And, here’s some context, from...

A scientific magic trick that pulled a lot more than a coin from behind the mammoth's ear. A preserved mammoth foot in a permafrost environment. Image credit: Love Dalen ============================================================================= Freeze-dried skin samples of a woolly mammoth found in Siberia have enabled scientists to create a 3D reconstruction of 52,000-year-old chromosomes. The achievement is a world-first for ancient DNA, and reveals which genes were active in the skin cells when the mammoth was alive. Shortly after the woolly mammoth died it spontaneously freeze-dried thanks to the weather, preserving its nuclear architecture in a dehydrated state that made it possible to...

A man who was renovating his wine cellar in Austria has made an extraordinary discovery. It wasn't a vintage red or white - but the remains of prehistoric mammoths...The winemaker, Andreas Pernerstorfer, came across a number of huge bones, buried deep in his wine cellar in the village of Gobelsburg, in the district of Krems, west of Vienna.He reported his find to the authorities, who identified them as the bones of at least three Stone Age mammoths..."I thought it was just a piece of wood left by my grandfather. But then I dug it out a bit and then I...

A biotech company that hopes to resurrect extinct species said Wednesday that it has reached an important milestone: the creation of a long-sought kind of stem cell for the closest living relative of the woolly mammoth. "This is probably the most significant step in the early stages of this project," said George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who co-founded Colossal Biosciences in Dallas. The woolly mammoth was a big, shaggy species of elephant that roamed the tundra before going extinct thousands of years ago. Colossal has been working to bring the mammoth, the...

The woolly mammoth could roam the Earth once again. That’s the goal of Colossal Biosciences as the biotech company announced a major breakthrough Wednesday in its mission to revive the 6-ton, 16-foot animal back from extinction. The Dallas-based company said it has created a set of stem cells from an Asian elephant in hopes of bringing back a creature that would be eerily similar to the woolly mammoth, according to reports. “This is probably the most significant step in the early stages of this project,” said geneticist and company co-founder George Church, a Harvard University professor, according to NPR. The...

Ask why, exactly, we need to bring woolly mammoths back to life after 4,000 years, and the answers become numerous and hideously predictable.To paraphrase Jeff Goldblum in “Jurassic Park,” just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should — even if that something is “cool.”Ben Lamm and Eriona Hysolli recently took to Newsweek to announce that they and their team at Colossal Biosciences are bringing the woolly mammoth back to life. This is not a pie-in-the-sky pseudo-sci fi dream that might happen at some undefined future date. “Our first mammoth calves will be born in 2028,” they declare.The plan...

A rare artifact has been discovered by archaeologists at an ancient mammoth kill site near Douglas, Wyoming, which they say is the oldest of its kind ever found in the Americas. The discovery, a tube-shaped piece of bone, is likely to have been a bead dating to around 12,940 years old, potentially making it the oldest known instance of American perforated jewelry. The discovery was made by University of Wyoming archaeology Professor Todd Surovell and his team at the La Prele Mammoth site, a location first revealed to archaeologists in 1986 when mammoth remains were found eroding out of a...

Straight-tusked elephants were the largest land mammals of the Pleistocene epoch, present in Europe and western Asia between 800,000 and 100,000 years ago.These animals had a very wide head and extremely long tusks, and were roughly three times larger than that of living Asian elephants, twice that of African ones, and also much larger than woolly mammoths.Estimates of maximum shoulder height vary from 3 to 4.2 m (10-14 feet) and body mass from 4.5 to 13 tons for females and males, respectively."We have estimated that the meat and fat supplied by the body of an adult Palaeoloxodon antiquus bull would...

Fort Myers, Fla. (WSVN) — A fossil enthusiast near Fort Myers stumbled upon an extraordinary find, unearthing a fully intact mammoth jaw believed to be around 10,000 years old from the waters teeming with alligators. John Kreatsoulas, the fossil finder from Fossil Junkies Dig and Dive Charters, expressed his amazement. “I grabbed onto it just to hold on for a second and I realized ‘Wait a second, that’s not a tree, that was a mammoth,'” he said. The remarkable discovery was made in an area known for its alligator presence. Currently working to restore the ancient jaw, Kreatsoulas plans to...

Based on sites excavated in the western United States, archaeologists know Paleo-American Clovis hunter-gatherers who lived around the time of the extinctions at least occasionally [emphasis added] killed or scavenged Ice Age megafauna such as mammoths. There they've found preserved bones of megafauna together with the stone tools used for killing and butchering these animals...Unfortunately, many areas in the Southeastern United States lack sites with preserved bone and associated stone tools that might indicate whether megafauna were hunted there by Clovis or other Paleo-American cultures. Without evidence of preserved bones of megafauna, archaeologists have to find other ways to examine...