Mammoth Hunters' Camp Site Found In Russia's Far East (15KYA)

Novosti ^ | 11-12-2007

[blam]

Mammoth hunters' camp site found in Russia's Far East

13:02 | 12/ 11/ 2007

KHABAROVSK, November 12 (RIA Novosti) - Archaeologists have found a 15,000 year-old hunters' camp site from the Paleolithic era near Lake Evoron in Russia's Far East, a source in the Khabarovsk archaeology museum said on Monday.

"The site dates back to the end of the Ice Age, a period which is poorly studied" Andrei Malyavin, chief of the museum's archaeology department said. "That is why any new site from this period is a discovery in itself."

The site, found during a 2007 archaeological expedition to Lake Evoron, is the largest of four Stone Age sites, discovered near the Amur River so far, and was most likely established by mammoth hunters.

"We came to this conclusion after studying flint pikes, arrowheads and a stone scraper," Malyavin said, adding that a comprehensive archaeological excavation could take a couple of years.

In 2006, archaeologists discovered an Iron Age burial mound around 2,500 years old containing a unique fragment from an iron dagger, which had been preserved in the Amur Region's acidic soil.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

[Augustinian monk]

In before Rosie pics

[fishtank]

13,000 B.C.

[Don Corleone]

P.E.T.A. alert

[mamelukesabre]

But where’s the cloned mammoth they promised us?

[catpuppy]

"We came to this conclusion after studying flint pikes, arrowheads and a stone scraper large pile of rusty beer cans ...

[2nd Bn, 11th Mar]

If it’s a hunting camp, then they’ll be digging up the empty Jack Daniels bottles pretty soon.

Semper Fi,

[tcostell]

I really hope that they manage to bring the mammoth back ala “Jurassic park” style cloning, because I’m betting that they are absolutely delicious.

[tcostell]

LOL

[mysterio]

I really hope that they manage to bring the mammoth back ala “Jurassic park” style cloning, because I’m betting that they are absolutely delicious.

I'm sure they would taste a lot like an elephant.

[Aurek-Besh]

Does Al Gore know about this age age stuff?

[tcostell]

Well I'll grant you there is probably some similarity, but if they're really the same, then how come we haven't eaten all the elephants too?

I don't know about you, but the day they announce that they've started cloning them I'm buying myself a 50 gallon drum of BBQ sauce just to have it ready.

[mysterio]

Researchers: Woolly mammoth genes nearly identical to elephant’s

Dec. 19, 2005 Courtesy Penn State University and World Science staff

The majestic woolly mammoth that roamed the Northern Hemisphere’s grassy plains before 10,000 years ago was 98.5 percent identical in its genes to the modern African elephant, researchers say.

The finds come from a study of mammoth bones from Siberia, conducted by researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and other institutions.

The results shows that scientists are taking strides forward in sequencing ancient DNA, traditionally a tricky field, the researchers said. Ancient DNA tends to break up and mix with genetic material from other organisms, complicating the work.

The team’s report on the first sequences from the genome of a woolly mammoth is to appear in the Dec. 22 online edition of the research journal Science.

The “breakthrough” allows for first comparisons of this species with today’s African and Indian elephants, the researchers said.

Previously, researchers had been able to analyze some mammoth DNA, but only a minuscule fraction, according to the team. Scientists in the past had to rely on a special type of DNA from compartments within cells called the mitochondria. This DNA is easier to analyze because it contain 1,000 times more copies of genes than the rest of the DNA, which is in the cell nucleus. But the mitochondria contain a tiny proportion of the full variety of the genes.

In the new study, researchers said they identified 13 million letters of genetic code from the DNA of the cell nuclei of the mammoth, an animal some scientists believe humans may have hunted to extinction.

The researchers said they showed that the sequence of these letters almost matched that of African elephant DNA. That reflects the animals’ close evolutionary relationship, they added.

The project became possible through the discovery of well preserved remains in the permafrost, or permanently frozen ground, of northern Siberia, the researchers said. What also helped was a new high-efficiency gene sequencing technique that could cope with the heavily fragmented ancient DNA, taken from the creature’s jaws.

[mysterio]

That would be a lot of BBQ.

[RightWhale]

That is close to the age of the oldest hunting sites in Alaska.

[Eagle74]

I heard mammoth tastes like chicken.

[mysterio]

The matrix must not have known what mammoth tastes like.

[gitmo]

Poachers?

[Larry Lucido]