Mr. Mol went on to say that mammoth tusks that are more than 100,000 years old are “very unusual,” and that discovering one specific might provide scientists with fresh insights into the Reduced Paleolithic, a period of Earth’s history that has been little understood up until now.
Scientists have discovered that our ancestors were moving out of Africa some 200,000 years ago, when the Earth was through a glacial period. They do not, however, understand how the changing temperature of the earth has impacted mammoths and other large creatures throughout the course of this period. What is equally unknown is how the introduction of mammoths in North America impacted the genetic diversity of the species.
In Dr. Fisher’s words, “we never really knew much about what was going on throughout that time period.” Getting access to sediments from this time period is difficult, thus we don’t have access to several specimens from this time period.
Mammoths, the shaggy, small-eared ancestors of modern-day elephants, first emerged around five million years ago and became extinct approximately 4,000 years ago, according to some estimates. The first mammoths came from Africa and migrated northward, developing into various species along the way, until they had inhabited most of the Northern Hemisphere as a result of their migration.
The first mammoths to go into North America were known as Krestovka or steppe mammoths, and they were the first to cross the Atlantic. These mammoths arrived in North America 1.5 million years ago from Eurasia, and they did it by marching over the Bering Strait, which was not surrounded by water at the time, as it is today. More over three hundred years after the woolly mammoth crossed the Bering Strait, it arrived in North America to join its kin who had been there for thousands of years. The hybridization of the two resulted in the creation of the Columbian mammoth, although no one knows when this occurred. Several years ago, a recent research suggested that the hybridization function happened at a minimum of 420,000 times, although more investigation is needed to confirm this.
According to Pete Heintzman, an adjunct professor at the Arctic College Museum of Norway who scientifically examines the DNA of mammoths and other ice age species, if the tusk is as old as experts believe it to be, it “may genuinely aid explain the time of this hybridization function.”
Despite the fact that exposure to saltwater may be harmful to biological tissue, the deep sea can be quite beneficial for DNA preservation efforts.
