Michigan Mammoth May Have Been Butchered By Humans

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.

Comments

Link Appears Borked

[Egg Sniper]

Plenty of alternates to be found.

Re:as opposed to UFOs?

[Austerity Empowers]

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

Re:That's just the way...

[Rainbow Nerds]

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.

Re:Okay.

[Rainbow Nerds]

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 is "hctaw s'yelaP" argument.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

Re:I had to

[RobinH]

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..."