Feature

A Mammoth of a Job

Mammoths may not have stalked through New Zealand's early forests, but they still fascinate locals.

Vicki Hyde

A standing-room-only audience at Auckland Museum were treated recently to a presentation on the trials and tribulations involved in pulling the remains of a 20,380-year-old mammoth from the frozen permafrost of Siberia. Research Associate Dick Mol talked about the excavation which is soon to be highlighted in the Discovery Channel's Raising the Mammoth documentary; the channel partially funded the expedition.

Last October, the remains of the Ice Age woolly mammoth were excavated in Siberia. Located under 4.57 metres of concrete-like permafrost, the specimen, still encased in a 21-tonne block of ice, was cut out of the ground, airlifted by helicopter, and flown 322 kilometres to the neighbouring town of Khatanga, where it was placed in an ice cave for future study.

The expedition was spearheaded by French explorer Bernard Buigues, who, along with a team of international scientists, battled time and the elements to bring up the ancient beast. Mol, from the Rotterdam Museum of Nature, was part of the project team, having been keenly interested in palaeontology since he was about twelve.

"I spent my teenage years in an area of The Netherlands where it was, and still is, possible to find fossils in gravel pits, small streams and alongside rivers. I was attracted by mammoths because they were all extinct and I had lots of questions that couldn't be answered by palaeontologists in my country," Mol says.

After his presentation at Auckland Museum, Mol gifted the Museum with a mammoth tooth. This came from a dredging exploration in the North Sea between England and The Netherlands which Mol worked on. Other New Zealand scientists are hopeful of seeing some of the mammoth hair.

Wooly Wonderings

Rob Kelly, of the Wool Research Organization of New Zealand, says that even one or two hairs would be enough for WRONZ to undertake some sophisticated protein analysis. The facility is a world leader in such analysis.

Although mammoth hair would be a far cry from the more usual Merino wool staple, Kelly is confident that they could find all sorts of interesting things about the hair. One possibility is tracing the different genetic relationships and evolutionary information that such protein analysis offers, by comparing the mammoth hair results with, for example, that of elephant hair.

Flora and fauna found tangled in the mammoth's fur are expected to reveal rich scientific information about the animal and the environment of the period.

Interest in the discovery has been strong worldwide. Not only has Mol discussed the work in venues around the world, but the Discovery Channel plans to air its documentary in 146 countries and 23 languages on the same date in primetime around the world.

The mammoth was first discovered in 1997 by nomadic reindeer herders, members of Siberia's indigenous tribe of people known as Dolgans, who spotted its tusks poking out of the frozen soil. The herders removed the ivory tusks from the beast for their high market value. Dolgan Guenadi Jarkov met Buigues, and told him of the Jarkov Mammoth find.

Buigues, a well-known explorer with a personal interest in mammoths, began planning an expedition to recover the remainder of the beast. Since 1979, Buiges has coordinated travel to the world's most remote and harsh locations, including Greenland, Antarctica and Siberia, and focusing on the North Pole in 1991. The excavation began in April 1998 after ground-penetrating radar indicated a large anomaly, suggesting a major portion of the mammoth's body still lay in the ice.

Among the more unconventional tactics used to excavate the mammoth, scientists melted a portion of the ice with hairdryers and they describe their excitement at being able to touch and smell the mammoth's flesh and fur.

"My heart was pounding as the ice melted and we got closer and closer to the skin," explains Dick Mol. "I have been working with mammoth remains for more than 25 years and I will never forget the sensation as I reached out and actually laid my fingers on the mammoth. It was overwhelming."

Mammoths, Elephas primigenius, first appeared in sub-Saharan Africa some 3-4 million years ago. From there they spread across Siberia and crossed the landbridge to North America. Mol has been working in Hot Springs, South Dakota, which is a rich mammoth site dating back 28,000 years. By 10,000BC, warmer weather and the arrival of nomadic human hunters started to put pressure on the mammoth population. The larger species were the first to die out, disappearing from the European and American landscapes around 8,000BC. A dwarf mammoth, confined to Wrangel Island off the coast of Siberia, lived on but eventually became extinct some 6,000 years later.

Mammoth remains have been found over the past 400 years and have been variously explained as those of biblical giants, Julius Caesar's elephants, underground monsters and great hairy devils.

Recovery of the mammoth, which involved reuniting the tusks with the body, was an emotional experience for the project team. Their next phase of work is to begin shortly. The Jarkov Mammoth is now housed in an ice cave in Khatanga awaiting the international team which will study it.

"We will collect as much data as possible from the ice block," says Mol. "The data that we will be collecting from plant remains, insects, the mammoth carcass and its internal organs will enable us to reconstruct the mammoth and its environment accurately."

Mol believes that the Jarkov Mammoth still holds surprises.

"We plan to erect a cold museum in Khatanga and to correct the popular belief that mammoths were adapted to the snow-covered Ice Age tundra. In fact it was living on a grass steppe, the so-called Mammoth Steppe, which was widespread on the Northern Hemisphere."

Clues From a Carcass

Scientists will study almost everything about the woolly mammoth specimen to find out more about how it lived and why it died, and gain insight into its prehistoric world.

Hair
...can hold pollen and other plant life, as can the permafrost surrounding it. That offers insight into vegetation in Siberia 20,000 years ago. It may also help verify this mammoth's cause of death. The working hypothesis is that it crashed through the ice and either drowned or starved to death.

Blood
...may yield some of the oldest and best-preserved blood cells ever examined, with a wealth of information within. Intact red blood cells recovered from Baby Dima, a 6-month-old mammoth calf which died 40,000 years ago, for example, was found to be more similar to the Asian elephant than the African elephant.

Stomach
...literally holds the evidence, because the mammoth ate constantly. Already, scientists have found that 65% of the plants in the diet of the Siberian mammoth match the fossilised pollen at sites in Utah. Depending on what's found now, scientists may learn more about why the mammoth became extinct -- for example, if foods reflect the post-Ice Age shift from grasslands to wetlands.

DNA
...the genetic blueprint for cells, if found in bone marrow or internal organs, may help scientists create a new mammoth in the lab. If found in sperm, it could be used to fertilise an elephant egg to create new, exotic giants. Beyond this purely speculative notion (which require good-quality sperm and DNA), there could be valuable information about mammoths and the ancient viruses infecting them.

Teeth
...have already shown how mammoths adapted to cold climates over time, for example revealing ridges showing how they got water by chipping at the ice. The new mammoth teeth may help determine where this specimen fits in the evolutionary scheme.

Tusks
...are a cross-section of age and health, because they grow in rings like trees -- the Jarkov Mammoth died at the age of 47. Wear patterns in the ivory may show more about how the mammoths lived.

Muscle
...says much about how the mammoth lived; along with the arteries, heart and other internal organs, it may reveal how the giant creature was the same as or different from modern elephants.

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.