In a recent study, University of Alaska Fairbanks paleontologist Matthew Wooller and his colleagues radiocarbon-dated what they thought were pieces of two mammoth vertebrae, only to get a whale of a surprise and a whole new mystery.
At first glance, it looked like Wooller and his colleagues might have found evidence that mammoths lived in central Alaska just 2,000 years ago. But ancient DNA revealed that two “mammoth” bones actually belonged to a North Pacific right whale and a minke whale—which raised a whole new set of questions. The team’s hunt for Alaska’s last mammoth had turned into an epic case of mistaken identity, starring two whale species and a mid-century fossil hunter.
“The first signs that something was amiss”
The aptly named Wooller and his team have radiocarbon-dated more than 300 mammoth fossils over the last four years, looking for the last survivors of the wave of extinctions that wiped out woolly mammoths and other Pleistocene megafauna at the end of the last Ice Age. Two specimens stood out immediately. Based on the radiocarbon dates, two mammoths had lived near Fairbanks as recently as 2,800 and 1,900 years ago. Wooller and his colleagues had been looking for the youngest woolly mammoth specimen in Alaska but were completely mystified.
“The radiocarbon data and their associated stable isotope data were the first signs that something was amiss,” wrote Wooller and his colleagues in their recent paper. At first, though, they had no idea quite how amiss things were.
Those unlikely radiocarbon dates came from a pair of vertebral growth plates (structures at the top and bottom of the vertebra where new bone forms during growth). The University of Alaska Museum of the North’s inventory listed them as mammoth bones from a site called Dome Creek, near Fairbanks, Alaska. DNA testing and some sleuthing by Wooller and his colleagues revealed that the specimens weren’t mammoth bones, and they were probably never even at Dome Creek.