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Michigan Mammoth May Have Been Butchered By Humans

Posted by timothy on from the possibly-wolverines dept.

Forbes reports that a mammoth recently unearthed in rural Michigan includes evidence that the animal was butchered for food: From the article: A small stone that could potentially be a cutting tool was also found with the mammoth bones. To confirm that this animal was butchered by humans, researchers will examine the bones for cut marks that would indicate people were processing it for meat. A third piece of evidence is the organized way the neck vertebrae of the mammoth were found. "An animal doesn't just come apart naturally leaving a sequence of tightly articulated vertebrae like that," Fisher said, indicating that the animal would have had to have been moved by humans for paleontologists to find the bones laid out in such a fashion.

41 comments

  1. Could it be? by Mr+Z · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Could this be the secret ingredient in Coney sauce?

    --
    Program Intellivision!
    1. Re:Could it be? by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

      Chilli sauce to put on hot dogs. (Think "Coney Island".)

      --
      Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
    2. Re:Could it be? by Mr+Z · · Score: 1

      I don't know who modded me down for trying to be funny. Coney dogs are a staple in that neck of the woods. I love 'em. I grew up not too far from there.

      --
      Program Intellivision!
    3. Re:Could it be? by Mr+Z · · Score: 1

      Yep. The actual secret ingredient (at least for a Flint-style coney, which is my fave) is finely ground beef heart.

      BTW, nobody I know in Michigan calls the sauce "chili." If you want a chili dog, by all means have one 'cause they're tasty too, but don't confuse it with a coney dog.

      Outside Michigan? Everything that claims to be a Coney dog is just a dang chili dog.

      --
      Program Intellivision!
    4. Re:Could it be? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, we've got the dry coney.
      when i want a chili dog i put chili on it - detroit and cleveland are known for their variants too, but they're wet coneys.

  2. Link Appears Borked by Egg+Sniper · · Score: 2

    Plenty of alternates to be found.

  3. That's just the way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... things work man.

    On a more serious note I am confident we will see a wooly mammoth in the not-to-distant future.

    1. Re:That's just the way... by Rainbow+Nerds · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I do think the woolly mammoth will eventually be created again by scientists. But I don't think it's quite as close as you'd think.

      I think it should be tested on perhaps a simpler type of animal and one where there's less of a gap between generations. The passenger pigeon is a good candidate for this, in part because it might be easy to get funded and the timescale for animals to reproduce is much quicker. Of the 32 or so passenger pigeons that have had their genomes sequenced, there aren't a lot of differences. That means it might not be necessary to create huge numbers of them with large genetic diversity for them to survive. This also requires sequencing the genome of a similar animal, in this case the band-tailed pigeon. Then it's necessary to determine what genes made the passenger pigeon what it was, rather than another type of pigeon, and creating a chimera by inserting passenger pigeon genes into the band-tailed pigeon genetic sequence. Even if a passenger pigeon can be created through this process, there's still the challenge of teaching the passenger pigeon to behave like one. Simply creating an animal with similar genetic code to a passenger pigeon doesn't make it a passenger pigeon.

      The same process could be done with the woolly mammoth by creating a chimera with the Asian elephant. Sequencing the genome is probably the simpler part, and that's underway. But it would be good to see the process done successfully with another animal like the passenger pigeon, which should be faster than the woolly mammoth. I'd guess it's probably 50 years away, but I think it'll eventually happen.

      Sadly, I don't think another famous extinct animal, the dodo, will be so fortunate. I'm not sure there will be as good of a close relative since it evolved in isolation for a long time on Mauritius. It's also old enough and in a climate warm enough that genetic preservation is much less likely.

      --
      M-I-Z
      kU still sucks!
    2. Re: That's just the way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wasn't a chimera a fire breathing lion? Sounds more complicated than a mammoth.

    3. Re:That's just the way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While you clearly have more knowledge on the subject than I do (which is next to none other than what I get to read on popular media) sure the differences between egg laying creatures and a mammal with a gestation period are going to be as important as merely implanting DNA. I imagine that a mammal would also require some kind of chimera or hybridised placenta to be created, more than just would happen at fertilisation.

      But once some kind of universal placenta was created, the possibilities would be quite far ranging. I'll wait to see the next sci fi movie about it, no doubt it will be a horrible flop, with a terrible story line based around an amazing premise that just gets butchered, which is fine since we're almost talking Frankenstein.

    4. Re:That's just the way... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You keep using all these words, and I don't believe you understand most of them.

      The Passenger Pigeon, by virtue of being a bird is farther away from being cloned than the Wooly Mammoth which is a mammal like Dolly the sheep. No bird has been cloned yet. Mainly because a few battered mammal cells will readily invade a female uterus and become a little mammal while avian dinosaurs require a full-featured egg.

      A Wooly Mammoth clone would be a chimera but only because the cloners-to-be, apparently can't be bothered with cloning mitochondrial DNA and putting it into working mitochondria. Lazy scumbags.

      Your cloning process knowledge seems to come from Jurassic Park. If the process involves patching their whole DNA, again this is far beyond current technology. Most probably, the people that intend to clone extinct animals are hoping they can find intact-ish DNA to stick into a cell and see what comes out from the other side. That's the state of the art.

    5. Re:That's just the way... by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Theoretically, the egg laying critters are easier - you have an appropriately sized egg with the right mix of nutrients (a problem for dinosaurs, since we will have to guess besides the egg size problem) and all you do is replace the DNA, provided you have enough source material. I remember reading something about this quite a while ago, probably when the original Jurassic Park movie came out and they discussed the likelihood of being able to do what was in the movie.

      Given where we are today, it seems likely that bringing extinct creatures back will start happening sooner than later, provided the world economy and stability do not deteriorate too much. I'd give it no more than 20 years before the first attempts happen.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    6. Re:That's just the way... by morgauxo · · Score: 1

      I used to see one all the time in the not-to-distant past.

      https://www.google.com/search?...

  4. Re:as opposed to UFOs? by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...or detroit has just been a rough place for a very long time...

  5. I had to by slashmydots · · Score: 1

    You know what else may have been butchered by humans? The Avatar the last airbender movie!
    But seriously, that evidence is really weak. Why not wait for the analysis of cut marks? That's the really strong indicator. They wrote this way too early and rushed it out...kind of like Avatar.

    1. Re:I had to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or get the police to work on it, I'm sure, they'll find the murderers, confessions and all, and even an incriminating video that gets misplaced before being made public.

    2. Re:I had to by ushere · · Score: 0

      and of course the perpetrators will be black...

    3. Re:I had to by RobinH · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Honestly I find most paleontologist evidence to be really weak. I understand that they have very little to work with, but compared to other branches of science, they sure make very long jumps to conclusions. I suspect a lot of it is the paleontologist (is that the wrong word?) saying something like "this could be a hint that..." and the reporter saying, "scientists discover..."

      --
      "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
  6. Okay. by minkowski76 · · Score: 0

    So the mammoth was killed by humans. And this is news, how? I'd be far more surprised if they had found a hominid-disarticulated apatosaurus, as would most educated people, which excludes creationists, naturally.

    1. Re:Okay. by Rainbow+Nerds · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, for one, it provides evidence of human activity in that region. It's not entirely clear when humans migrated into that area, so it provides information about human migration. It also provides some information about the climate of the area because the mammoth was limited to surviving in certain habitats. Yes, it's obvious that humans hunted the woolly mammoth, but it's new for that region.

      --
      M-I-Z
      kU still sucks!
    2. Re:Okay. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "So the mammoth was killed by humans. And this is news, how? "

      There's a small chance it was Fred Flintstone.

    3. Re:Okay. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, for one, it provides evidence of human activity in that region. It's not entirely clear when humans migrated into that area, so it provides information about human migration. It also provides some information about the climate of the area because the mammoth was limited to surviving in certain habitats. Yes, it's obvious that humans hunted the woolly mammoth, but it's new for that region.

      It also undermines the claim that the "native americans" were completely harmless to the environment.

      North American had lots of megafauna before their ansestors wiped them out. Early Europeans would have found some really cool stuff and later colonial Europeans had the damn indigenous not wiped things out.

    4. Re:Okay. by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      So the mammoth was killed by humans.

      Even TFS doesn't say (or claim) that.

      analysis of cut marks - if any - could confirm that the animal was butchered by humans. Whether it was killed by humans is a distinct question. Not unrelated, but there never has been anything to prevent opportunistic gatherers from taking advantage of a kill made by other means - including old age, falls, enmirement. (IS that a word - coffee not takeneffect yet? Stuck in mud.)

      Such coincidental finds, traps or kills may have suggested hunting and trapping methods to early hunters.

      To demonstrate human killing of the beast, you need to find something like a spear point (or several) in important parts of the body. But that still leaves open the possibility of an animal downed by some other reason, then killed by pin-cushioning by humans. So what you really want is an animal with a (partly-)healed spear wound penetrating the hard anatomy.

      I'm not someone who follows this line of research myself, but I know that there are multiple examples of healed tooth scars in the dinosaur corpus of fossils, and in other areas of palaeontology, so I'd be fairly surprised if the type of specimen wasn't known at all. Whether this specimen shows such evidence is another question.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  7. Let me guess.. by MichaelSmith · · Score: 1

    One of those humans was wearing a wristwatch

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    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  8. Fox News reports by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The poor mammoth called for backups, but the State Department was too busy wiping servers.

    1. Re:Fox News reports by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 1

      With a cloth?

      Besides, at this point, what difference does it make?

    2. Re: Fox News reports by MTBaldwin · · Score: 1

      With a cloth, im sure...

  9. And knowing this will get me ... what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nada thing. Dammit Spanky I have to live my own life.

  10. It is "hctaw s'yelaP" argument. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2
    A generation before Charles Darwin, Paley explored the question of origin of species. Some of his lines of arguments in favor of divine creation resonate to this day. He was an inspiring figure to Charles Darwin. His argument was: "If you come across a watch in the woods, you would instantly recognize it is not natural, the way components fit together, the purposefulness of the components etc would clearly convince you that it was not a naturally occurring object". This argument is called "Paley's watch" argument.

    In this case the scientists are arguing the way the components of a natural are disassembled the way they are disarticulated shows the evidence of human hand. This is the reverse of Paley's watch, it is hctaw s'yelaP.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  11. Re: as opposed to UFOs? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, it was Republicans. They hate mammoths and want them to die. That is the way of their kind.

  12. Re:That's just the way..Not right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I never went to bed with a Wooly Mammoth...but I've woke up with a few...

  13. Aboriginals destroyed teh megafauna by mauriceh · · Score: 1, Insightful

    So much evidence points to the extinctions of megafauna on several continents by man.

    Meanwhile the aboriginal peoples try to push the myth that they are" safe custodians" of wildlife.

    That is simply bullshit. They have had zero regards for anything other than their own greed.

    And yet, somehow, we still allow illegal hunting and fishing by people, because it is "their heritage".

    --
    Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
    1. Re:Aboriginals destroyed teh megafauna by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AHEM, they very well may have learned that exact lesson from the stories of their ancestors.
      OR the adjustment faced with the scarcity of traditional prey.
      WHAT are the various stories behind the gift of maize to the south/central american natives?

    2. Re:Aboriginals destroyed teh megafauna by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What on earth does "the aboriginal peoples" mean?

      Do you just mean people whose culture is different from yours? You seem a bit bitter and twisted about that.

  14. Imagine that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought they were all vegetarians since it was the ice age, no mammoth farts or things causing global warming back then.

  15. Re:It is "hctaw s'yelaP" argument. by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
    Darwin was certainly aware of Paley and his interpretation of biological design, but it's also pretty clear that he didn't share Paley's interpretation. Darwin's own description of "Origin" as "one extended argument" is precisely challenging Paley's interpretation of the appearance of design as being the result (per Darwin) of descent-with-inheritance interacting with his mechanism of natural selection, while Paley looked at the same evidence (the appearance of design in biology) and interpreted as supporting the inference of a designer. (The more modern "neo-Darwinian synthesis" approach to evolution puts more weigh on differential reproductive success rather than out and out inter- and intra-specific conflict, but that's a minor change of emphasis.)

    That fundamentally remains the case in the non-debate over the reality of evolution - is it the result of natural forces, or of a supernatural "designer", a.k.a. a god.

    --
    Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"