An actual Mammoth Tusk exposed in a riverbank in Alaska
An actual Mammoth Tusk exposed in a riverbank in Alaska
Researchers at the University of Virginia were trekking in the remote Yukon area of Alaska, when they saw an enormous woolly mammoth tusk protruding from dirt of the Koyukuk River bank, and snapped this photo.
The University of Alaska Fairbanks had first discovered the massive fossil - mammoths went extinct approximately 10,000 years ago - a year or two previously, and had fastened it to the river bank with ropes.
As unusual as it seems to find a pre-historic elephant bone on shore, in Alaska finding woolly mammoth remains is so common that in 1986 remains of the creature were designated the state fossil.
"It was a great place for woolly mammoths to live," said Patrick Druckenmiller, director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North "This particular area is known globally for its abundance of ice age mammal remains, which includes mammoth tusks."
Research of Mammoth bones has become so sophisticated, using detailed isotope analysis, that experts are able to track the life and death of the animals in precise detail.
'From the moment they're born until the day they die, they've got a diary and it's written in their tusks,' Druckenmiller said.
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