woolly mammoth

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It's a 'Mammoth Meatball' —in Size and Species

Scientists unveil cultivated meat made with mammoth DNA, but won't eat it

(Newser) - When a single meatball gets its own museum exhibit, you know it's something special. In this case, it's a mammoth meatball—or rather "an approximation of mammoth meat," as CNN reports. The sample wasn't taken from woolly mammoth remains discovered in Arctic permafrost. Instead, the...

Claim on Joe Rogan Podcast Sparks a 'Bone Rush' in NYC

Gold miner John Reeves says mammoth bones were dumped in East River in the 1940s

(Newser) - Ask people what you might find buried in the muck at the bottom of New York City's East River and they'd likely say "mob boss" before thinking of mammoth bones. But several groups of treasure hunters have taken to the waterway in recent weeks after hearing a...

Miner's Surprise Find: 'She's Perfect and She's Beautiful'

Mummified baby woolly mammoth found in Canada is first such discovery in North America

(Newser) - He might have hoped to strike a rich vein of gold in Canada's Yukon. Instead, a miner there discovered something that has paleontologists' jaws dropping: the mummified remains of a baby woolly mammoth. It's the first time a fully preserved specimen has been discovered in North America and...

It Was Set to Be a Dump. Then, 'Largest Find of Its Kind'

Human-built pits in Mexico believed to be first known woolly mammoth traps

(Newser) - Humans were hunting woolly mammoths with traps some 15,000 years ago, according to a first-of-its-kind discovery. Archaeologists working the site of a planned garbage dump in Tultepec, Mexico, say they've found two pits used to capture the animals, as well as 824 bones from at least 14 mammoths—...

The Species Is Extinct. It May Soon Be 'Protected' Anyway
Why the Extinct Mammoth
Could Become 'Endangered'
in case you missed it

Why the Extinct Mammoth Could Become 'Endangered'

Species may get new protections because of a 'gold rush' in emerging fossils

(Newser) - The last woolly mammoth died about 4,000 years ago. So why on earth might an international organization bestow protected status on the species? Because fossils are popping up so frequently in thawing Siberia that what the Guardian likens to a "gold rush" is developing among unregulated prospectors. To...

People Now Getting Ivory Fix From Woolly Mammoths

But the hunt in Siberia is taking a toll

(Newser) - The hunt is on for frozen tusks from the extinct woolly mammoth, and NPR reports that it's making people rich in otherwise poor regions of Siberia. But it's also taking a devastating toll on the landscape, according to a photographer who embedded with hunters for three weeks. "...

Woolly Mammoths Could Be 'De-Extinct' in 2 Years

According to a 'maverick geneticist'

(Newser) - This whole nostalgia thing is getting out of control because scientists are about to bring back the woolly mammoth, the Guardian reports. Harvard professor George Church—who New Scientist calls a "maverick geneticist"—is leading a "de-extinction" team that says it's about two years away from...

Alaska's Woolly Mammoths Likely Died of Thirst

Rising seas made fresh water scarce on St. Paul Island 5,600 years ago

(Newser) - Some of the world's last remaining woolly mammoths literally died of thirst, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The ancient animals were still living on a small island off the coast of Alaska until about 5,600 years ago—or...

Yale Grad Students Debunk 1951 Dinner-Party Legend

A hoax of mammoth proportions is revealed

(Newser) - The Explorers Club Annual Dinner in New York—now going on its 112th year —has long treated its guests to exotic food items, including in more recent years deep-fried tarantulas, goat eyeball martinis, and the barbecued sex organs of bulls, reports the Atlantic . But the most famous meal of...

Farmer Finds Rare Prehistoric Mammoth

'It was certainly a lot bigger than a cow bone,' says Michigan man

(Newser) - A Michigan farmer had to take a short break from installing a drainage pipe in his wheat fields Monday when his backhoe hit the pelvis of a prehistoric mammoth, ABC News reports. "We didn't know what it was, but we knew it was certainly a lot bigger than...

Farmer Finds Mammoth Skeleton in His Field

They thought they were looking at a fence post at first

(Newser) - James Bristle and a friend were digging in his southern Michigan soybean field when they unearthed what looked like a bent fence post, caked with mud. Instead, it was part of a pelvis from an ancient woolly mammoth that lived up to 15,000 years ago. A team of paleontologists...

Genome Reveals Secrets of Last Mammoths
 Genome Reveals Secrets 
 of Last Mammoths 
in case you missed it

Genome Reveals Secrets of Last Mammoths

Low genetic variation perhaps led to decline on Wrangel Island

(Newser) - The last of the woolly mammoths in Siberia died out about 10,000 years ago, but a smaller number living on Wrangel Island, off the coast of what is now Russia, managed to stick around for another 6,000 years. Researchers set out to investigate the two groups and the...

Oil Workers Strike ... Woolly Mammoth

Tusk came up in excavator bucket

(Newser) - Oil workers in Siberia struck woolly mammoth while carrying out land reclamation work. The workers near Nyagan in western Siberia halted digging with the excavator when a tusk turned up in the bucket, and used hand shovels to find more of the mammoth's skeleton around 10 feet under the...

Science Just Got Closer to Elephant-Mammoth Hybrid

But so far, it's just cells in a petri dish

(Newser) - For the first time since the woolly mammoth went extinct, its genes are working again, Popular Science reports. Sure, it's only in a lab; woolly mammoths haven't wandered the planet for about 4,000 years. But the effort at Harvard has brought the return of the animal a...

'Rare' Mammoth Found in Idaho Now Underwater

Excavation team temporarily thwarted by rising water levels

(Newser) - A portion of a Columbian mammoth skull and tusks have been uncovered in southeastern Idaho, and experts say a rare entire skeleton might be buried there. Experts estimate the mammoth was about 16 years old and lived about 70,000 to 120,000 years ago in what was a savanna-like...

Bachelor Party Unearths Ancient Remains

Revelers appear to have stumbled upon an intact stegomastodon skull

(Newser) - Many bachelor parties' participants get more than they bargained for, but for one group of revelers at Elephant Butte Lake State Park in New Mexico, what they got on Monday could turn out to be historic. "As we are cruising by we see ... what seems to be a large...

Reason Mammoths Went Extinct? Blame Humans

Massive die-off correlates with us, not so much climate change

(Newser) - What caused the extinctions of the wooly mammoth, giant sloth, mastodon, and other beasts? A new study makes a strong case that the answer is us. Scientists have long argued over the cause of the "Quaternary extinction"—which took out vast numbers of large mammals about 12,000...

Woolly Mammoths' Undoing: Dogs?
Woolly Mammoths'
Undoing: Dogs?

Woolly Mammoths' Undoing: Dogs?

They may have helped humans round up the huge creatures

(Newser) - Scientists are floating an intriguing new theory about the demise of woolly mammoths: Dogs may have driven them to their graves. Specifically, dogs that learned to hunt with humans, reports Science . The idea stems from research of sites around the world known as mammoth cemeteries because of the huge number...

Inside S. Carolina's Tussle Over the ... Woolly Mammoth

Lawmaker calls for Bible quote in fossil bill

(Newser) - Olivia McConnell, 8, wants South Carolina to have a state fossil—after all, it's one of fewer than 10 that don't. But her efforts to get approval for the woolly mammoth have met with some obstacles in the state capital, USA Today reports. Republican state Sen. Kevin Bryant...

Did a Flower Shortage Kill the Woolly Mammoth?

Or did a mammoth shortage kill the flowers?

(Newser) - Scary as they might have looked, woolly mammoths had a decidedly non-threatening diet: They feasted on small flowers, according to a new theory. And the decline of these once-abundant plants, called forbs, may explain the disappearance of the mammoths themselves, NPR reports. Experts had believed woolly mammoths ate grass, but...

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