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Although human hunting played a part in the demise of the woolly mammoth about 10,000 years ago, homo sapiens were but bit players in a global drama involving climate change, comet impact and a multitude of other factors, scientists have found in separate studies. Previous research had blamed their demise on tribal hunting. But new findings “pretty much dispel the idea of any one factor, any one event, as dooming the mammoths,” said Glen MacDonald, a researcher and geographer at the University of California in Los Angeles, to LiveScience.com. In other words, hunting didn’t help, but it was not instrumental....

Gene reveals mammoth coat colour By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News Woolly mammoths had both dark and light coats The coat colour of mammoths that roamed the Earth thousands of years ago has been determined by scientists. Some of the curly tusked animals would have sported dark brown coats, while others had pale ginger or blond hair. The information was extracted from a 43,000-year-old woolly mammoth bone from Siberia using the latest genetic techniques. Writing in the journal Science, the researchers said a gene called Mc1r was controlling the beasts' coat colours. This gene is responsible for hair-colour in...

A ginger-haired mammoth baby found in Siberia could have been snatched by hungry human hunters from the jaws of a lion 10,000 years ago. The body of the beast - the first ever found with its distinctive 'strawberry blonde' hair - has been described as being of 'huge' significance. It's could be evidence that ancient humans attacked and fed on mammoths in Siberia, with the body of 'Yuka' showing wounds consistent with an attack by lions AND people.

Scientists in search of ancient tusks made a startling discovery. They uncovered the nearly perfectly preserved remains of a woolly mammoth in northern Siberia. The juvenile mammoth is believed to be more than 10,000 years old, but was only 3 to 4 years old when it died. It is unlike any other mammoth that has been unearthed before. The scientists reveal their discovery, which they named "Yuka," in a BBC documentary. Yuka has strawberry blond hair, unlike the dark hair that other mammoths have been found to have. Plus, Yuka's footpads are incredibly well preserved, but some of his bones...

Scientists, it's said, behave more like lawyers than philosophers. They do not so much test their theories as prosecute their cases, seeking supportive evidence and ignoring data that do not fit—a failing known as confirmation bias. They then accuse their opponents of doing the same thing. This is what makes debates over nature and nurture, dietary fat and climate change so polarized. But just because the prosecutor is biased in favor of his case does not mean the defendant is innocent. Sometimes biased advocates are right. An example of this phenomenon is now being played out in geology over the...

A juvenile mammoth, nicknamed "Yuka," was found entombed in Siberian ice near the shores of the Arctic Ocean and shows signs of being cut open by ancient people. The remarkably well preserved frozen carcass was discovered in Siberia as part of a BBC/Discovery Channel-funded expedition and is believed to be at least 10,000 years old, if not older. If further study confirms the preliminary findings, it would be the first mammoth carcass revealing signs of human interaction in the region. The carcass is in such good shape that much of its flesh is still intact, retaining its pink color. The...

An exceedingly well preserved juvenile mammoth carcass has been found in Siberia near the Arctic Ocean and it shows signs of having been attacked by a cave lion and then partially butchered by humans. Dubbed Yuka by the Mammuthus organization, which is studying the remains, the six foot long creature was believed to have been a year and a half to perhaps three or four years old at the time of its death. The mammoth was found by tusk hunters in Northern Siberia, who then turned it over to scientists with the Mammuthus organization. The BBC and Discovery have been...

We report the discovery in Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico of a black, carbon-rich, lacustrine layer, containing nanodiamonds, microspherules, and other unusual materials that date to the early Younger Dryas and are interpreted to result from an extraterrestrial impact. These proxies were found in a 27-m-long core as part of an interdisciplinary effort to extract a paleoclimate record back through the previous interglacial. Our attention focused early on an anomalous, 10-cm-thick, carbon-rich layer at a depth of 2.8 m that dates to 12.9 ka and coincides with a suite of anomalous coeval environmental and biotic changes independently recognized in other...

Guest Post by David MiddletonFrom The Seattle TimesSEATTLE (AP) – It’s not unusual for an archaeologist to get stuck in the past, but Carl Gustafson may be the only one consumed by events on the Olympic Peninsula in 1977.That summer, while sifting through earth in Sequim, the young Gustafson uncovered something extraordinary _ a mastodon bone with a shaft jammed in it. This appeared to be a weapon that had been thrust into the beast’s ribs, a sign that humans had been around and hunting far earlier than anyone suspected.Unfortunately for Gustafson, few scientists agreed. He was challenging orthodoxy with...

An accidental discovery by a bulldozer driver has led to what may be the find of the century: an ice-age burial ground that could rival the famed La Brea tar pits. After two weeks of excavating ancient fossils at the Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado, scientists from the Denver Museum of Natural Science returned home Wednesday with their unearthed treasures in tow -- a wide array of fossils, insects and plant life that they say give a stunningly realistic view of what life was like when ancient, giant beasts lumbered across the Earth. Since the team’s arrival in mid-October,...

The iconic Stonehenge in the UK is one of the most famous prehistoric monuments in the world, but it is not the only stone formation of its kind. Similar stone alignments have been found throughout England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales… and now, it seems, in Lake Michigan. According to BLDGBLOG, in 2007, Mark Holley, professor of underwater archeology at Northwestern Michigan College, discovered a series of stones arranged in a circle 40 feet below the surface of Lake Michigan. One stone outside the circle seems to have carvings that resemble a mastodon—an elephant-like animal that went extinct about 10,000 years...

In a surprisingly under-reported story from 2007, Mark Holley, a professor of underwater archaeology at Northwestern Michigan University College, discovered a series of stones – some of them arranged in a circle and one of which seemed to show carvings of a mastodon – 40-feet beneath the surface waters of Lake Michigan. [Image: Standing stones beneath Lake Michigan? View larger]. If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest. [Image: The stones beneath Lake Michigan; view larger]. In a PDF assembled by...

Underwater Archaeologists Find Possible Mastodon Carving On Lake Michigan Rock September 4, 2007 11:51 p.m. EST Nidhi Sharma - AHN News Writer Traverse City, MI (AHN) - Underwater archaeologists in Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay are speculating a boulder they found in a June ship wreck to be engraved with a prehistoric carvings. Mark Holley, a scientist with the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve Council, believes that the granite rock, which was found hidden at a depth of about 12 metres, has markings that resemble a mastodon. A mastodon is an elephant-like creature that once inhabited parts of North America....

68-million-year-old T. rex proteins are oldest ever sequenced Scientists have confirmed the existence of protein in soft tissue recovered from the fossil bones of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) and a half-million-year-old mastodon. Their results may change the way people think about fossil preservation and present a new method for studying diseases in which identification of proteins is important, such as cancer. When an animal dies, protein immediately begins to degrade and, in the case of fossils, is slowly replaced by mineral. This substitution process was thought to be complete by 1 million years. Researchers at North Carolina...

The find, he said, gives residents a window into a time thousands of years ago when beasts such as mastodons and woolly mammoths roamed the familiar hills and glaciercarved valleys of the area... Stafford, who holds a doctorate in archaeology, and Cranbrook geologist John Zawiskie worked from about 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday to dig up and remove enough bones from the site to fill a truck bed. Mastodons - ancient relatives of elephants - roamed Michigan from about 3.75 million to 11,000 years ago. There are about 250 sites in the state where mastodon remains have been found,...

SAN JOSE, Calif. - The fossilized bones of a creature that might have been a mastodon were unearthed Tuesday in the creek bed of a suburban river being renovated for flood protection. The remains of what appears to be a massive pelvic bone, ribcage fragments and a tusk were uncovered along the Guadalupe River in San Jose. The river project has been cited as a model of how to integrate nature and development. The discovery prompted both wonder and frustration, as officials tried to determine the source of the remains but couldn't find experts to scour the site. "We've never...