Earth Sciences Forum

Andre · Last edited by Andre on Sun Jul 22, 2007 8:32 am; edited 1 time in total

seen the latest Mammoth discovery?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6284214.stm

The Pleistocene woolly mammoth (mammuthus primigenius) is the orphan of the paleao climatologists. It has not existed in the IPCC reports until the last one, the Fourth Assessment Report. The problem with mammoths is that they proof that paleo climate was completely different.

Nilequeen and I are lucky enough to watch mammoths over the schoulder of one of World most prominent Pleistocene mammals specialists, Dick "sir Mammoth" Mol, a good friend.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/290/5499/2062

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billiards · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 12:01 am Post subject:

Thank you Andre for bringing this to our attention. To my knowledge 10,000 yrs ago corresponds to a time where the Earth had previously warmed dramatically after the cold event called the "Younger-Dryas".

So if this is right, 10 ka ago the ice sheets which covered much of NorthEast America and Siberia would have retreated somewhat, leaving some land exposed for the mammoths to graze and migrate north, does this tie in with the mammoth finding?

Andre · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 8:25 am Post subject:

Curious, that Younger Dryas, isn't it?

So what is the general idea. from the ice age movies we *know* that the mammoth was a lonely behemoth, dragging itself laboriously through the snow and ice of the North Pole in a raging blizzard, pursued by a pack of hungry, howling wolves??

Or?

We know from the Siberian finds that Mammuths were abundant in the North during the *cold* Younger Dryas but they disappeared abruptly shortly after the onset of the *warm* Holocene. Yet we see frozen mammoth mummies. And we accept this as normal?

Were those mummies flash frozen in the *warm* Holocene? The issue came into the attention of the public in 1999 with this:

http://www.learnersonline.com/weekly/archive99/week43/index.htm

At that point in 1999 I asked myself: wtf? Was it getting warmer or colder? And why don't climate people bother about this. Nothing happened even after a much more spectacular find, the Yukagir mammoth:

http://www.ggzh.ch/img/vortrag/20061023_bild1_gross.jpg

(There are copyright issues with this particular picture so I won't img-link but I urge all to click that link.)

The man on the left is my pal Dick Mol, the head examiner is Bernard Buigues, the head is the Yukagir mammoth. Very Happy

Anyway, the Jarkov mammoth was my incentive to duck into the climate issues. Here was a mystery to be solved, which clearly showed that our understanding of ice cores and climate cannot be right.
_________________
Moderator of http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/climatesceptics/

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia."

Charley Brown

Andre · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 8:52 am Post subject:

This is a part of the introduction of a book about the Yukagir mammoth, written by Dick Mol et al in Dutch, Nilequeen and I have translated it. Unfortunately the book is only published in Japanese, when the Yukagir mammoth was on the Expo in 2005.

billiards · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:01 pm Post subject:

Okay, so I don't know very much about mammoths, when did they become extinct? You mentioned that it was in the Holocene, I presume you are talking about the temperature peak called the "Holocene Maximum" about 6 ka BP.

Was this Jarkov mammoth one of the last to go, when exactly did it die?
Do experts think the extinction was sudden? Or was it a gradual population decline, perhaps related to the rise of humans and/or disease?

How many frozen specimens have been found, could it be a one-off anomaly?

Andre · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 1:16 pm Post subject:

Andre · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:27 pm Post subject:

billiards · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 2:59 pm Post subject:

Why the difference in tusks?

Hmmmm (geophysicist here!), at a guess I'd say it might have something to do with fighting, maybe the bigger tusks were more effective at defending from attacks which was the male role, why they are curved I have no idea. Females were less concerned with fighting, big tusks get in the way of the more mundane tasks, like grazing, so it was probably easier for them to have short tusks?

Andre · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 3:38 pm Post subject:

billiards · Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:17 pm Post subject:

Andre · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:44 am Post subject:

billiards · Posted: Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:35 pm Post subject:

Okay, I have tried to fit the pieces together, is this okay?

My first observation is that it appears that the Mammoths disappeared in each location as the climate was cooling. Nothing odd about that, right?

What does strikes me as odd is that the last (known) surviving mammoths were found on Wrangel island which (according to a brief google search) seems to be North of Russia! Were the mammoths seeking refuge in cooler places (higher latitude corresponds to cooler climate right, or was there some kind of anomaly here)? Or perhaps this was somewhere where they sought refuge from hunters and/or disease? It would be helpful to know what caused the extinction of these beasts...

Andre · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 11:09 am Post subject:

billiards · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2007 3:01 pm Post subject:

The plot thickens... I've revised my graph taking into account the new information, how does this one look?

I think I see the problem you were getting at quite clealry now. Why were mammoths thriving in Siberia during the coldest period, and then seemingly disappearing after the world warmed up suddenly?

Looking at it again, it seems that perhaps the mammoths were not well suited to the warmer conditions. Although the temperature record in my graph doesn't go back that far, I believe that both the Jarkov and the Yakagir mammoths (both found in Russia) were living in colder conditions than the Siberian Mammoths thriving in the Younger Drias. Perhaps it was the naturally occuring global warming that killed the mammoths?

Bystander · Joined: 23 Jul 2007 Posts: 12

Something about this topic continues to elude me;