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The so-called Mount Holly Mammoth (Mammuthus sp.) lived about 12,800 years ago in what is now New England, an area comprising six states in the northeastern United States, and potentially straddled the area’s first human settlers, according to a news report. Dartmouth College study.
The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) at the Royal BC Museum, Victoria, British Columbia. Image Credit: Tracy O / CC BY-SA 2.0.
Remains of Pleistocene megafauna, including proboscidians (elephant-like animals), are well documented in northeastern North America, but well-dated finds are rare in New England with only eight examples. in the region and none in the state of Vermont.
The Mount Holly mammoth discovered during the construction of the railway in the summer of 1848 is the most complete and best documented set of proboscidian remains from Vermont, but it has remained undated.
A molar, two tusks and an unknown number of bones were extracted from a bog perched near Mount Holly.
“It was long believed that megafauna and humans in New England did not overlap in time and space and that it was probably ultimately environmental change that led to the extinction of these animals in region, but our research provides some of the first evidence that they may have actually coexisted, ”said Dartmouth College researchers Dr Nathaniel Kitchel and Dr Jeremy DeSilva.
The researchers’ goal was to obtain a radiocarbon date for the fragmentary rib bone of the Mount Holly mammoth.
They took a 3D scan of the material before taking a small sample (one gram) from the broken end of the rib bone.
They then sent the sample to the Center for Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia for radiocarbon dating and stable istotopic analysis.
“The Mount Holly mammoth was one of the last known mammoths in the northeast,” said Dr DeSilva.
“The radiocarbon date for the 12,800-year-old fossil overlaps with the accepted age of when humans may have initially settled in the area, which would have occurred at the onset of the younger Dryas.”
The results were published in the journal Boreas.
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Nathaniel R. Kitchel and Jeremy M. DeSilva. First AMS radiocarbon dating and stable C: N isotope analysis for Mount Holly Mammoth, Vermont, USA. Boreas, published online March 4, 2021; doi: 10.1111 / bor.12517
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