Ancient elephants this one is so attractive even though it is extinct. Recent research has revealed that these elephants have been roaming large areas.
Reported from BBC, scientists have analyzed the chemicals stored in the tusks of a mammoth. It turns out ivory have to do with the journey of ancient elephants.
Recent research from an international team published in the scientific journal Science shows that mammoths could travel the equivalent distance of circling the earth twice.
The woolly mammoth was a cousin of the modern elephant. They roamed northern latitudes during the prehistoric period called the Pleistocene.
“It’s not clear whether these trips were seasonal migrations, but they spanned a very large area,” said lead researcher Dr Matthew Wooller, of the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Mammoth tusks have tree rings that can record information about their life history.
“He visited a lot of places in Alaska during his lifetime, which is pretty amazing when you think about how big the area is,” he said.
In ivory mammoth there are chemicals that serve as markers on the map. So that it becomes a clue to the places he has visited.
By combining these two things, the researchers were able to trace the history of the journey of a male mammoth that lived 17,000 years ago in Alaska. His body was found near the Brooks Range mountains in the north of the country.
“From the day they are born until the day they die, they have a diary and it is written on their tusks,” said co-author Dr. Pat Druckenmiller, director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North.
Mammoths continued to add new layers to their tusks throughout their lives. When the tusks are cut to length, these growth bands will look like stacks of ice cream cones. This will show a chronological record of its existence.
“Nature usually doesn’t offer complete and easy-to-read accounts of individual lives,” he added.
The researchers traced the journey of ancient elephants by studying various types or isotopes of the chemical elements strontium and oxygen stored in 1.5 meters long tusks. This is then matched against a “map” that predicts isotopic variation across Alaska.
They found that mammoths had roamed 70,000 km of Alaskan landscape during their 28 years of life on the planet. While one time around the earth is 40,000 km.
This study offers clues about extinction mammoth. For animals that roam over vast areas, the encroachment of forests into grassland habitats at the end of the ice age would put pressures that limit how far they could roam for food. It also makes them more vulnerable to being hunted by predators.
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