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Scientist unearths mammoth link
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July 9, 2003
When Grant Zazula helped unearth the most impressive and well preserved fossil find in the Yukon last summer (July 2002) he almost screamed: "Yabba-dabba-doo." The favourite exclamation of Fred Flintstone, a prehistoric cave dwelling cartoon character on TV, would have been appropriate from Zazula. As a child, the Simon Fraser University doctoral student of biology was a fan of the Flintstones.
Now a paleontologist studying animal and plant fossils near the Alaska/Yukon border, Zazula is living out his childhood dreams of discovering colossal prehistoric mammals. "The woolly mammoths on the Flintstones inspired my fascination with ice age animals as a kid," laughs the Edmonton-born Zazula.
While exploring an Arctic creek bed near Dawson City last summer, Zazula and Duane Froese, a postdoctoral fellow at SFU, made discoveries that led them to co-write a paper recently published in Nature. They found, encased in frozen earth, a 25,000-year-old woolly mammoth tusk, 2.8 m (10’6") long, with a maximum circumference of 0.56 m (22") and weighing 85 kg (183 lbs). "The bearer of this tusk was about one and half times the size of an African elephant. Considering that such an elephant eats about 125 kilos (275 lb) of food a day, a mammoth like this would have eaten a lot more to survive in the Arctic," emphasizes Zazula.
What really got the scientist thumping his chest, a la Fred Flintstone, was his team’s subsequent discovery and analysis of macrofossils. Bits of ancient plants, seeds, leaves, and insects were embedded in the tusk’s icy earthen tomb. They confirm paleontologists’ long-held suspicion that the Arctic, now inhospitable to most mammals, had the vegetation to support mammoth creatures during the last ice age.
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Contact:
Grant Zazula, 867.841.4561, Arctic field office until late August, 604.291.4458
Carol Thorbes, 604.291.3035; cthorbes@sfu.ca
Now a paleontologist studying animal and plant fossils near the Alaska/Yukon border, Zazula is living out his childhood dreams of discovering colossal prehistoric mammals. "The woolly mammoths on the Flintstones inspired my fascination with ice age animals as a kid," laughs the Edmonton-born Zazula.
While exploring an Arctic creek bed near Dawson City last summer, Zazula and Duane Froese, a postdoctoral fellow at SFU, made discoveries that led them to co-write a paper recently published in Nature. They found, encased in frozen earth, a 25,000-year-old woolly mammoth tusk, 2.8 m (10’6") long, with a maximum circumference of 0.56 m (22") and weighing 85 kg (183 lbs). "The bearer of this tusk was about one and half times the size of an African elephant. Considering that such an elephant eats about 125 kilos (275 lb) of food a day, a mammoth like this would have eaten a lot more to survive in the Arctic," emphasizes Zazula.
What really got the scientist thumping his chest, a la Fred Flintstone, was his team’s subsequent discovery and analysis of macrofossils. Bits of ancient plants, seeds, leaves, and insects were embedded in the tusk’s icy earthen tomb. They confirm paleontologists’ long-held suspicion that the Arctic, now inhospitable to most mammals, had the vegetation to support mammoth creatures during the last ice age.
-30-
Contact:
Grant Zazula, 867.841.4561, Arctic field office until late August, 604.291.4458
Carol Thorbes, 604.291.3035; cthorbes@sfu.ca