A female woolly mammoth's lifetime movements end in an ancient Alaskan hunter-gatherer camp.


Journal

Science advances
ISSN: 2375-2548
Titre abrégé: Sci Adv
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 101653440

Informations de publication

Date de publication:
19 Jan 2024
Historique:
medline: 17 1 2024
pubmed: 17 1 2024
entrez: 17 1 2024
Statut: ppublish

Résumé

Woolly mammoths in mainland Alaska overlapped with the region's first people for at least a millennium. However, it is unclear how mammoths used the space shared with people. Here, we use detailed isotopic analyses of a female mammoth tusk found in a 14,000-year-old archaeological site to show that she moved ~1000 kilometers from northwestern Canada to inhabit an area with the highest density of early archaeological sites in interior Alaska until her death. DNA from the tusk and other local contemporaneous archaeological mammoth remains revealed that multiple mammoth herds congregated in this region. Early Alaskans seem to have structured their settlements partly based on mammoth prevalence and made use of mammoths for raw materials and likely food.

Identifiants

pubmed: 38232155
doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adk0818
doi:

Types de publication

Journal Article

Langues

eng

Sous-ensembles de citation

IM

Pagination

eadk0818

Auteurs

Audrey G Rowe (AG)

Alaska Stable Isotope Facility, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.
Department of Marine Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Clement P Bataille (CP)

Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Sina Baleka (S)

McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Evelynn A Combs (EA)

Healy Lake Village Council, Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Barbara A Crass (BA)

University of Alaska Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Daniel C Fisher (DC)

Museum of Paleontology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.

Sambit Ghosh (S)

Alaska Stable Isotope Facility, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Charles E Holmes (CE)

Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Kathryn E Krasinski (KE)

Department of Anthropology, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, USA.

François Lanoë (F)

Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

Tyler J Murchie (TJ)

McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Hakai Institute, Heriot Bay, British Columbia, Canada.

Hendrik Poinar (H)

McMaster Ancient DNA Centre, Department of Anthropology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Departments of Biochemistry and Biology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

Ben Potter (B)

Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Jeffrey T Rasic (JT)

National Park Service, AK, USA.

Joshua Reuther (J)

University of Alaska Museum of the North, Fairbanks, AK, USA.
Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Gerad M Smith (GM)

Department of Anthropology and Geography, University of Alaska Anchorage, AK, USA.

Karen J Spaleta (KJ)

Alaska Stable Isotope Facility, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Brian T Wygal (BT)

Department of Anthropology, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, USA.

Matthew J Wooller (MJ)

Alaska Stable Isotope Facility, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.
Department of Marine Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK, USA.

Classifications MeSH