The Original Ice Road Truckers Were Mammoths

In their lifetimes, Mammoths travelled vast distances. According to evidence gleaned from the analysis of a 17,000-year-old tusk, the monsters travelled nearly twice the circle of the Earth. Mammoth tusks develop in layers, similar to tree rings, and chemical residues in each layer might reveal astonishing features. Researchers broke a 6-foot (2-meter) tusk belonging to the University of Alaska Museum of the North in half lengthwise and extracted 400,000 tiny samples.

The team’s meticulous microsampling and the results’ resolution, which allowed them to trace a long-dead animal’s activity in great detail, are unparalleled! It’s incredible that the researchers were able to track this male mammoth’s movements over several years. The researchers’ method involves looking at distinct traces of elements called isotopes to determine where the mammoth has been drinking water or consuming plants.

The proportions of these many varieties, such as strontium isotopes, vary by geography. According to Matthew Wooller, senior author of the article published in the journal Science on Thursday, the mammoth visited many different places of Alaska during its career. The researchers were able to match the chemical alterations in the tusk to a chemical map of Alaska that they created by studying the teeth of hundreds of tiny rodents in the museum’s collections.

According to a news release, the rats move very short distances over their careers and represent local isotope signals. According to Wooller, a professor and paleoecologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a variety of factors could have motivated the ice period animal to travel such great distances. Mammoths are enormous grazers who must constantly move in order to discover new food patches. Mature male Mammoths, such as the one we studied, must also look for a female to mate with. He also speculated that the movement could be seasonal.