Free Republic

Woolly mammoths could one day walk the Earth again, it seems. In an extraordinary Jurassic Park- style experiment, DNA from a frozen specimen of the extinct giant was used to reproduce their blood. And it revealed that the beasts used more than their distinctive shaggy coats to keep warm in harsh Arctic conditions 25,000 years ago - they had antifreeze in their veins. The scientists believe the genetic adaptation technique could be used to resurrect body parts and proteins from other extinct animals. Researcher Prof Kevin Campbell-of the University of Manitoba, Canada, said: 'The molecules are no different than going...

Michigan scientists are trying to piece together a major find that dates back 11-thousand years ago. The elephant-like animal, known as a mammoth, was discovered at a golf course along Morrison Lake, near Saranac. "I told them, for my luck, it was probably a rock and I don't want to waste your time", says Dixie Riley, owner of Morrison Lake Country Club. That's what she told scientists at the University of Michigan. The call turned out to be well worth their time. "They found a tusk, vertebrae and determined it was a 6-ton mammoth." It all started in August of...

PARIS (AFP) – An iceberg the size of Luxembourg knocked loose from the Antarctic continent earlier this month could disrupt the ocean currents driving weather patterns around the globe, researchers said Thursday. While the impact would not be felt for decades or longer, a slowdown in the production of colder, dense water could result in less temperate winters in the north Atlantic, they said. The 2550 square-kilometre (985 square-mile) block broke off on February 12 or 13 from the Mertz Glacier Tongue, a 160-kilometer spit of floating ice protruding into the Southern Ocean from East Antarctica due south of Melbourne,...

> "Mammoths are conventionally believed to have become extinct in North Western Europe about 21,000 years ago during the main ice advance, known as the 'Last Glacial Maximum'" said Lister. "Our new radiocarbon dating of the Condover mammoths changes that, by showing that mammoths returned to Britain and survived until around 14,000 years ago." >

In what a top Florida anthropologist is calling “the oldest, most spectacular and rare work of art in the Americas,” an amateur Vero Beach fossil hunter has found an ancient bone etched with a clear image of a walking mammoth or mastodon. According to leading experts from the University of Florida, the remarkable find demonstrates with new and startling certainty that humans coexisted with prehistoric animals more than 12,000 years ago in this fossil- rich region of the state. No similar carved figure has ever been authenticated in the United States, or anywhere in this hemisphere. The brown, mineral-hardened bone...

Only a handful have ever been found before. But none like her. Her name is Lyuba. A 1-month-old baby mammoth, she walked the tundra about 40,000 years ago and then died mysteriously. Discovered by a reindeer herder, she miraculously re-appeared on a riverbank in northwestern Siberia in 2007. She is the most perfectly preserved woolly mammoth ever discovered. And she has mesmerized the scientific world with her arrival - creating headlines across the globe. Everyone wants to know... how did she die? What can she tell us about life during the ice age and the Earth's changing climate? Will scientists...

Abundant tiny particles of diamond dust exist in sediments dating to 12,900 years ago at six North American sites, adding strong evidence for Earth's impact with a rare swarm of carbon-and-water-rich comets or carbonaceous chondrites, reports a nine-member scientific team. These nanodiamonds, which are produced under high-temperature, high-pressure conditions created by cosmic impacts and have been found in meteorites, are concentrated in similarly aged sediments at Murray Springs, Ariz., Bull Creek, Okla., Gainey, Mich., and Topper, S.C., as well as Lake Hind, Manitoba, and Chobot, Alberta, in Canada. Nanodiamonds can be produced on Earth, but only through high-explosive detonations or...

HOT SPRINGS -- Joanne Bugel is happy to be the Earthwatch volunteer who uncovered the 115th tusk at the Mammoth Site and moved the popular Hot Springs tourist site’s mammoth tally to 58. [snip] This group has been a particularly productive bunch, said crew chief Don Morris. [snip] Bones unearthed by 2008 Earthwatch volunteers include: three tusks, a tooth, a patella, six ribs, a fibula, four vertebra and assorted other bones. Neteal Graves, 18, of Kaycee, Wyo., also unearthed some coprolite – [snip] Graves has the Mammoth Site in her bloodline. In 1974, her mother, Cheri Graves, was a college...

"Lyuba" gives scientists glimpse of mammoth insides By Dmitry Solovyov Thu Apr 10, 1:07 PM ETReuters Photo: The carcass of the 4-month-old mammoth, known to researchers as Lyuba, is seen on an... MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian scientists say they have obtained the most detailed pictures so far of the insides of a prehistoric animal, with the help of a baby mammoth called Lyuba found immaculately preserved in the Russian Arctic. The mammoth is named after the wife of the hunter who found her last year. The body was shipped back to Russia in February from Japan, where it was studied...

Climate Change And Human Hunting Combine To Drive The Woolly Mammoth ExtinctWoolly mammoths were driven to extinction by climate change and human impacts. (Credit: Mauricio Anton) ScienceDaily (Apr. 1, 2008) — Does the human species have mammoth blood on its hands" Scientists have long debated the relative importance of hunting by our ancestors and change in global climate in consigning the mammoth to the history books. A new paper uses climate models and fossil distribution to establish that the woolly mammoth went extinct primarily because of loss of habitat due to changes in temperature, while human hunting acted as the...

NOVY URENGOI, Russia: As Viktor Seliverstov works in his makeshift studio in this hardscrabble Siberian town he is enveloped in a cloud of ivory dust. His electric carving tool whirrs over the milky surface of teeth and tusks, as he whittles them into key fobs, knife handles and scrimshaw figurines. But these are not whale bones or walrus tusks he is working on. The ivory in this part of the world comes from the remains of extinct woolly mammoths, as they emerge from the tundra where they have been frozen for thousands of years. It is a traditional Russian business...

Cause Of Death Of Russian Baby Mammoth Discovered ScienceDaily (Mar. 20, 2008) — On September 27, 2004, the front part of a baby mammoth’s body was found in Olchan mine in the Oimyakon Region of Yakutia. Specialists of the Museum of Mammoth of the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North, Academy of Sciences of Sakha Republic (Yakutia), have been thoroughly studying the finding and they have published the first outcomes. There remained only the head, part of the proboscis, the neck area and part of the breast of the baby mammoth’s body. The body is practically cut off behind...

The mystery of mammoth tusks with iron fillings By By Ned RozellMarch 5, 2008 A giant meteor may have exploded over Alaska thousands of years ago, shooting out metal fragments like buckshot, some of which embedded in the tusks of woolly mammoths and the horns of bison. Simultaneously, a large chunk of the meteor hit Alaska south of Allakaket, sending up a dust cloud that blacked out the sun over the entire state and surrounding areas, killing most of the life in the area. Embedded iron particles surrounded by carbonized rings in the outer layer of a mammoth tusk from...

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...

Jill Cook, Deputy Keeper in the Department said: "Had I been shown this outline of a mammoth during a visit to one of the well known cave art sites in France or Spain, I would have nodded and been able to accept it in the context of other more obvious pictures. At Gough's, or anywhere in England, it is not so easy. Cave art is so rare here that we must always question and test to make sure we are getting it right. Opinions on this may differ but we do seem to be looking at an area of ancient...

WACO -- Not far from modest suburban homes in the middle of some thick Texas woods lies a secret boneyard.Surrounded by a tall chain-link fence and covered by what looks like a red-and-white circus tent, the site contains the remains of towering monsters. Remains of at least 25 mammoths, signs of a big saber-toothed cat and a long extinct camel have been found at the site.This is the Waco Mammoth Site, a collection of prehistoric fossils embedded in the dirt not far from the Bosque River. The site could be a potent educational resource if it were not off-limits to...

A mammoth that died 10,000 years ago was unearthed in Siberia.

Should scientists try to clone a mammoth if DNA is obtained from remains found in Siberia? Yes No

Frozen baby mammoth to be sent to Japan for research (Kyodo) _ A frozen mammoth found recently in Russia in unprecedented good condition is set to be sent to a Japanese university for examination, several experts told Kyodo News on Friday. The mammoth, thought to be a six-month-old female, was found in the best state of preservation among all frozen mammoths ever recovered, said the experts. "The mammoth has no defects except that its tail was bit off," said Alexei Tikhonov, vice director of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. "In terms of its state of preservation,...

35,000-Year-Old Mammoth Sculpture Found in Germany In southwestern Germany, an American archaeologist and his German colleagues have found the oldest mammoth-ivory carving known to modern science. And even at 35,000 years old, it's still intact. The 35,000-year-old mammoth figurine was revealed on Wednesday. REUTERS Archaeologists at the University of Tübingen have recovered the first entirely intact woolly mammoth figurine from the Swabian Jura, a 220-meter long plateau in the state of Baden-Württemberg, thought to have been made by the first modern humans some 35,000 years ago. It is believed to be the oldest ivory carving ever found. "You can be...