Ancient mammoth tusk discovered 10,000 feet deep in ocean off California coast
Ancient mammoth tusk discovered 10,000 feet deep in ocean off California
coast
Joseph Guzman, The Hill
November 29, 2021
An ancient mammoth tusk has been retrieved from the deep ocean waters off
the coast of central California that could be more than 100,000 years old.
In 2019, scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute were
exploring an underwater mountain around 10,000 feet deep and nearly 200
miles offshore with a remotely operated vehicle.
The researchers saw what appeared to be an elephant tusk and managed to
take a small piece of the tusk at the time, but returned this summer to
recover the entire specimen.
With the help of researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz
and the University of Michigan who examined the find, scientists confirmed
last week the tusk actually once belonged to a Columbian mammoth.
Researchers said the deep sea’s cold, high-pressure environment helped keep
the ancient tusk, which measures more than 3 feet in length, intact.
“This specimen’s deep-sea preservational environment is different from
almost anything we have seen elsewhere,” Daniel Fisher, paleontologist with
the University of Michigan, said in a statement.
“Other mammoths have been retrieved from the ocean, but generally not from
depths of more than a few tens of meters,” Fisher said.
Research is underway to extract more information from the tusk. Scientists
are using CT scans of the tusk to determine the animal’s age and how it may
have ended up deep offshore.
The research team believes the discovery could be the oldest well-preserved
mammoth tusk recovered from this region of North America. Dating of the
tusk is underway and it’s estimated to be more than 100,000 years old.
“You start to ‘expect the unexpected’ when exploring the deep sea, but I’m
still stunned that we came upon the ancient tusk of a mammoth,” Steven
Haddock, senior scientist with the Monterey Institute, said.
The Columbian mammoth roamed the Americas as far north as the Northern U.S.
and as far south as Costa Rica. The species went extinct some 11,500 years
ago.