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The Proboscidea of the Past
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Are Scientists on the Verge of Resurrecting the Woolly Mammoth?
Jan 22, 2019 The prehistoric beasts roamed the earth 10,000 years ago—and scientists are obsessed with bringing them back. Sarah Pruitt KimStim  *This image is copyright of its original author Every summer, groups of hunters head to the remote, uninhabited New Siberian islands in search of the elusive “white gold”—a perfectly formed tusk of a woolly mammoth—hidden in the thawing Arctic permafrost. They are not only exploring the furthest reaches of the Arctic Ocean, but traveling back in time, carrying out a primordial quest for the tusks of the massive beasts that roamed the forbidding landscape in droves before going extinct 10,000 years ago. Of course, there’s always the chance the hunters may stumble not just on a tusk or two, but on an entire set of mammoth remains, including fur, flesh and even oozing blood.  *This image is copyright of its original author An illustration of a family of Woolly Mammoths. Aunt Spray/Getty Images That’s what happened in 2013, when a team from Yakutsk, Russia, uncovered the almost-complete carcass of a young female mammoth buried in the permafrost on the New Siberian Islands. Not only were three legs, a majority of the body, part of the head and the trunk still relatively well preserved, but when the researchers began efforts to dislodge the animal’s remains, they noticed dark, sticky blood oozing from the carcass. Carbon dating revealed that Buttercup, as she was dubbed, lived some 40,000 years ago. From her remains, including a vial of blood drained from her carcass, scientists hoped to extract living mammoth cells that will yield intact DNA—the missing link in modern scientists’ long-running quest to bring this ancient behemoth back from the dead. In the new documentary film Genesis 2.0, Swiss documentarian Christian Frei and his co-director, Siberian filmmaker Maxim Arbugaev, follow the intrepid mammoth tusk hunters in the New Siberian Islands, as well as various scientists in the United States, Russia, South Korea and China who are working to bring the mammoth back to life in one form or another. Traditional Chinese carvers make elaborate sculptures out of mammoth ivory, and first-class mammoth tusks can net the hunters tens of thousands of dollars on the international market, especially since China banned the import and sale of elephant ivory in 2016. Russia exported 72 metric tons of mammoth ivory in 2017, with more than 80 percent of it going to China.  *This image is copyright of its original author KimStim For the Siberian mammoth hunters, finding a top-notch tusk to sell is the goal, of course—a lot of what they find is in poor condition—but it’s also a mixed blessing. In local culture, which has long considered the woolly mammoth a sacred beast, it is considered bad luck to touch mammoth remains, let alone remove them from the earth. “The tusk hunters have very mixed feelings when they are lucky,” Frei says. “It feeds their families, and they're desperately hoping for this sheer luck. But when they do find the nice tusks, then they have these mixed feelings of being really afraid.” Whatever the market value of a preserved ancient tusk is, it’s nothing compared to the scientific community’s high-stakes quest to resurrect the woolly mammoth, Jurassic Park-style. Since 2015, a team led by the renowned molecular engineer and geneticist George Church of Harvard University has been working to produce a mammoth-elephant hybrid, rather than a clone. They plan to do this through “synthetic biology,” or splicing the genes of a woolly mammoth with those of an Asian elephant, its closest living relative, which shares 99 percent of its DNA.  *This image is copyright of its original author George church, genetics professor at Harvard (left), and South Korean Scientist Hwang Woo-suk. Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe/Getty Images & Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images Then, of course, there’s the work going on at South Korea’s Sooam Biotech Research Foundation, headed up by the controversial veterinarian and cloning expert Hwang Woo-suk. Scientists there have already mastered the process of cloning your beloved pet dog—for a cool $100,000. Barbra Streisand is among the celebrities known to have had her dog cloned, and Hwang has even donated some experimental puppies for use as Russian police dogs. But despite dedicated effort, scientists have not yet managed to clone a woolly mammoth, although they keep trying. In addition to the Sooam scientists, researchers in Russia are still searching for living mammoth cells within the remains of Buttercup and other recovered mammoth carcasses, but the nature of DNA itself poses a serious challenge to their quest. “The mammoth is an iconic animal. I mean, who wouldn't want to see it?” Frei says of the cloning efforts. Yet he spoke with specialists who told him “postmortem DNA is decaying within hours sometimes. It's very delicate.” Those looking to see the woolly mammoth’s return may want to pin their hopes to synthetic biology, rather than cloning: Within the next decade, George Church and his team expect to create the first mammoth-elephant hybrid. Their efforts aim not only to protect the endangered Asian elephant, but to combat global warming. By grazing on the Arctic tundra, the animals would expose the earth underneath to the cold air, keeping it frozen longer. While turning back the climate change clock is a worthy goal, watching Genesis 2.0 helps make clear that if scientists are able to resurrect the long-extinct woolly mammoth, they aren’t likely to stop with just one prehistoric beast. “The resurrection of the woolly mammoth is the first manifestation of something much bigger,” Frei says. “You can't say where this is all going, but it will be definitely the next big technological evolution.” By Sarah Pruitt https://www.history.com/news/wooly-mammo...ng-genesis
25,000 Years Later, Javelin Is Still Embedded in Mammoth's Rib
About 25,000 years ago, ice age hunters in what is now Poland threw a light spear known as a javelin at a mammoth. Now, the discovery of that javelin, still embedded in the mammoth's rib, has revealed a major surprise: the first evidence that ice age people in Europe used weapons to hunt the giant beasts. Previously, researchers wondered whether our ancestors had killed mammoths by trickery, for instance, by chasing them into pits or off cliffs. Or, perhaps ice age hunters targeted weak or sick mammoths that were easy to finish off. But now, "we finally have a smoking gun, the first direct evidence of how these animals were hunted," Piotr Wojtal, an archaeozoologist at the Institute of Systematics and Evolution of Animals at the Poland Academy of Sciences in Kraków, told Science in Poland, a site run by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education. [Photos: A 40,000-Year-Old Mammoth Autopsy] Deadly weapon Researchers initially found the mammoth rib in 2002, at a mammoth hotspot in Kraków, where scientists, over the years, have discovered the remains of at least 110 mammoths that lived between 30,000 and 25,000 years ago, the researchers said. "Among tens of thousands of bones, during a detailed analysis of the remains, I came across a damaged mammoth rib," Wojtal told Science in Poland. "It turned out that a fragment of a flint arrowhead was stuck in it." It wasn't until February 2018 that they took a detailed look at the specimen. During this examination, scientists found the 0.3-inch-long (7 millimeters) fragment of the flint tip, which likely broke when a hunter drove the spear into the mammoth's body. "The spear was certainly thrown at the mammoth from a distance, as evidenced by the force with which it stuck into an animal," Wojtal told Science in Poland. "The blade had to pierce 2-centimeters-thick [0.7 inches] skin and an 8-centimeter [0.04 inches] layer of fat to finally reach the bone." This blow probably didn't kill the mammoth, but if the hunt involved several armed hunters, it's likely that strikes from other weapons, "probably directly into soft tissues and one of the organs," killed the giant, Wojtal said.  *This image is copyright of its original author Ice age hunters? Over the past 20 years, researchers have found mammoth remains containing human-made weapons at two sites in Siberia, but "I believe this is the first find of a weapon embedded in a mammoth bone in Europe," said Adrian Lister, a professor of vertebrates and anthropology at the Natural History Museum in London, who wasn't involved with the finding. "It is important because it proves beyond reasonable doubt that mammoths were hunted," Lister told Live Science. Until now, there was only circumstantial evidence that ice age people in Europe hunted mammoths. For instance, the Polish site of Kraków Spadzista Street contains burnt bones involved in supporting the tongue, indicating that ancient people feasted on roasted mammoth tongue, Lister said. "But you can never be absolutely sure that such animals were actually hunted rather than scavenged," Lister said. Or, if the mammoths did appear to be hunted, it remained a mystery what weapons were used against them, such as spears or traps. The new find shows, without a doubt, that a spear was used against the beast, Lister said. What killed off the mammoths? Mammoths lived in Europe starting about 500,000 years ago and started dying out about 15,000 years ago. However, they survived longer in Alaska and lived on Wrangel Island, off northeast Russia, until about 4,000 years ago. [In Photos: Mummified Woolly Mammoth Discovered] A mix of changing climatic conditions (the ice age was ending) and hunting likely caused the mammoth's extinction, but researchers still debate which played a larger role. In this case, however, this specific example is not necessarily evidence that humans played a big role in their extinction, Lister said. "That doesn't prove people killed them in [large enough] quantities to drive them to extinction," Lister said. Moreover, this particular mammoth died about 25,000 years ago, at least 10,000 years before mammoths died out in Europe, "so 'sustainable' hunting is implied, at least at that time," Lister said.
https://www.livescience.com/64540-ice-ag...mmoth.html 
Standing 3,85 mts tall at the shoulder (the actual animal would have stood over 4 mts at the shoulder in the flesh ) The spectacular skeleton of the gigantic Mammuthus meridionales is one of the centerpieces of St Petersburg Zoological Museum
Credit to @chasingmammoth  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
Mammoth
Credit to @_quagga  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author
" Platybelodon was a genus of large herbivorous mammals related to the elephant. It lived during the middle Miocene Epoch in Africa, Asia and the Caucasus. ".
" Modern reconstructions based on partial and skeletal remains reveal that mastodons were very similar in appearance to elephants and, to a lesser degree, mammoths, though not closely related to either one. Compared to mammoths, mastodons had shorter legs, a longer body and were more heavily muscled, a build similar to that of the current Asian elephants. The average body size of the species M. americanum was around 7 feet 7 inches in height at the shoulders, corresponding to a large female or a small male. Large males were up to 9 feet 2 inches in height. Among the largest male specimens, the 35-year-old AMNH 9950 was 9.5 feet tall and weighed 7.8 tonnes. "
" Palaeoloxodon namadicus or the Asian straight-tusked elephant, was a species of prehistoric elephant that ranged throughout Asia, from India to Japan and is thought to have died out around 24,000 years ago, near the end of the Pleistocene. "
American Mammoth (Mammut americanum)
Credit to ANNH  *This image is copyright of its original author
" Deinotherium was a large prehistoric relative of modern-day elephants that appeared in the Middle Miocene and survived until the Early Pleistocene. During that time, it changed very little. In life, it probably resembled modern elephants, except it had downward-curving tusks attached to the lower jaw.
Deinotherium was a large proboscidean. Two adults of D. giganteum are around 3.6–4.0 m (11.8–13.1 ft) tall and weighed 8.8–12 tonnes (8.7–11.8 long tons; 9.7–13.2 short tons). This is similar to adult males of D. proavum, one of which weighed 10.3 tonnes (10.1 long tons; 11.4 short tons) and was 3.59 m (11.8 ft) tall. However, both these species are smaller than a 45-year-old male of D. "thraceiensis", at 4.01 m (13.2 ft) tall and 13.2 tonnes (13.0 long tons; 14.6 short tons). Scientific name: Deinotherium Phylum: Chordata Order: Proboscideans Rank: Genus Did you know: It may have rooted in soil for underground plant parts like roots and tubers, pulled down branches to snap them and reach leaves, or stripped soft bark from tree trunks. "
The evolution of elephants...
Anthöny Pain channel. Illustrations by Satoshi Kawasaki
" Deinotherium was a large prehistoric relative of modern-day elephants that appeared in the Middle Miocene and survived until the Early Pleistocene. During that time, it changed very little. In life, it probably resembled modern elephants, except it had downward-curving tusks attached to the lower jaw.
The way Deinotherium used its curious tusks has been much debated. It may have rooted in soil for underground plant parts like roots and tubers, pulled down branches to snap them and reach leaves, or stripped soft bark from tree trunks. Deinotherium fossils have been uncovered at several of the African sites where remains of prehistoric hominid relatives of modern humans have also been found. Early Pleistocene species of young Deinotherium might have also fallen prey to Homotherium. Scientific name: Deinotherium Phylum: Chordata Order: Proboscideans " Art by Mauricio Anto.
Dwarf elephant and giant swan... The dwarf elephant lived within some mediterranean islands (Malta, Chyprus, Crete) during the early Pleistocen. No higher than a pony at the withers.
Depiction by Zdenek Burian. |
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