At the link, a picture of a man posing with a mammoth tusk — it's huge — that might be "worth $80,000 to $100,000 or even more."
[S]ome scientists lament the tusk hunting and trade. "Each of these tusks is kind of like a tree, which has rings," he says. "The tusks themselves can kind of carry information about the climate, the diet — that would be valuable data. On the other hand, if they find mammoth hair, or an intact mammoth, they're the first ones that tell the scientists."
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Early combs had tusks.
If there are millions of them, do scientists need each and every one to study? Sounds to me like there are plenty of tusks to go around.
Huh. My husband and I were talking about this subject only yesterday. It's gotten increasingly difficult to be a classical string player who travels to multiple countries -- any border crossing now means inspection and possible confiscation of your instrument or your bow.
Ivory is bad enough, but ebony is also verboten unless harvested in particular countries, and bows ... well, the best bows are made of pernambuco wood, and pernambuco is now an endangered species. Awkward. Of course, most of the best bows were made before pernambuco was an endangered species, but how is a customs agent supposed to know that? Or, for that matter, to tell pernambuco from any other wood?
Or mammoth ivory from elephant ivory? My husband has a classical bow (i.e., in the style of the late 18th c.) with an ornate mammoth-ivory frog. The bowmaker used mammoth ivory specifically because elephant ivory is banned, but how likely is it that the average customs agent can distinguish them by sight?
Sounds like the earth is warming up to a time when mammoths roamed the earth. That's what the earth has always done. Warms up, then cools off. Some day the earth will cool off so much that most things will die.
"If there are millions of them, do scientists need each and every one to study? Sounds to me like there are plenty of tusks to go around."
The scientists are so greedy!
They want all the tusks so they can look for more evidence of global warming, even though the emergence of the tusks from the ice is itself evidence. They want to drill into them and look for tusk rings (like tree rings).
See? Even global warming has an ivory lining.
I felt a sudden urge to photoshop a violin bow made from a mammoth tusk. A single bow from a single tusk, a huge unusable bow, and that being devoid of humor, the urge vanished.
The scientists said when the mammoth they found melt the thing that struck them was the smell. Locked into the ice then drip drip drip BLAM there it is in your nose.
Ann Althouse said...
They want all the tusks so they can look for more evidence of global warming, even though the emergence of the tusks from the ice is itself evidence.
I'd say the tusks are evidence of global cooling instead. The Mammoths roamed the land when it was warm (er). Then it froze, now it's getting warmer. Climate does that. It is always changing. Why think that only man is the cause this time, when there have been thousands of cooling/warming cycles before...
Free enterprise!
Pole Tusk Rush of '13!
So....IF it is all about global warming and the melting of the ice caps exposing the flora and fauna that USED to live and thrive in the upper latitudes: doesn't this show that we are merely getting BACK to the more normal and inviting climate?
Actually, we are just in an interglacial period and the latest newest "climate change" horror story is that we are NOT warming (damn!) and that we are going to be entering a new ice age. All man's fault of course. Everything is....we must be punished :-D
Arctic Ice is normal. It's right in the middle of the baseline average going back to the cold 70s.
They say that if you grind the tusks to a fine powder and then dissolve the powder in wine, it becomes a powerful aphrodisiac. Sadly, you're only attracted to female mammoths, and good luck finding one of those.
Altouse said,
They want all the tusks so they can look for more evidence of global warming, even though the emergence of the tusks from the ice is itself evidence. They want to drill into them and look for tusk rings (like tree rings).
Then what was happening where all these Mastathingies got stuck in the ice? Musta been pretty damn cold if they couldn't migrate out of the way huh?
They should be looking for these things in Alabama, because, you know . . .
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the Tusks are loosa.
It works better when you just say it, which is what Groucho Marx did.
The Mammoths roamed the land when it was warm (er).
and
So....IF it is all about global warming and the melting of the ice caps exposing the flora and fauna that USED to live and thrive in the upper latitudes: doesn't this show that we are merely getting BACK to the more normal and inviting climate?
No. The heyday of the mammoths was during the Ice Age when it was much colder in Siberia (though the area was mostly unglaciated) than it is there today — which is definitely saying something. Siberia even today has winters which puts my home state of Montana (the recordholder for the continental U.S.: –70 deg. F) to shame.
However, as usual in those sorts of situations, it's not so much the amount of cold, as the amount of food — and evidence is that the Siberian tundra at the time hosted a rich herbal ecology which (vigorously growing during summer) could support large herds of elephant-like megafauna. That environment — in effect much like the Serengeti of Africa — has disappeared.
It's religion. Science is pure. Profit is evil.
The Smithsonian and other government agencies (Japan and who else) go to Antarctica to collect meteorites. Great science... but how much does each trip cost? A huge number of meteorite finds are from Northwest Africa because nomads there have found out that there is big money in it (just like these mammoth tusk hunters). That's where NWA 7034 was found, and bought by a private collector who sent it to my professor (I believe it's still owned by the collector) and it's simply amazing science. A really Big Deal. So nomads have gone back out to the location and scoured the desert for every single related pebble of that meteorite. For the money now that it's worth even more. Would a team from the Smithsonian even have found it? Almost certainly not.
I gave a presentation last week about private space exploration companies (SpaceX, Planetary Resources, etc.,) and during the Q&A one of the grad students asks if I approved, and then if I thought that private enterprise was compatible with science.
Like I said... religion.
Same with mammoth bones. It would be incredible to find an intact mammoth in the permafrost. It would be even more incredible if it was in good enough shape to recover genetically. But no matter what, it's great science. And now there are so many more sets of eyes looking, and like the guy in the article said... if they find something interesting they'll call. And if scientists want to buy a "tree-ring" cross section, they've got that many more of them available to study.
But the religion persists.
"Siberian tundra at the time hosted a rich herbal ecology which (vigorously growing during summer) could support large herds of elephant-like megafauna."
Just wondering... do we know that? Or are we assuming there were large herds because there are large herds of elephants in Africa? Perhaps mammoths and mastodons were loners or ran in nuclear family groups.
"It is always changing. Why think that only man is the cause this time, when there have been thousands of cooling/warming cycles before..."
Um...no one has said humankind is the unique cause of global warming. However, the evidence suggests that our activity is a dominant one among all the factors that lead to the warming cycle, and that the cycle this time appears to be exacerbated by and is accelerating as a result of our activity.
For each cycle of warming/cooling/warming, there will be those unique influences among the repeating ones that play their part in the generation of the new cycle.
If we ceased all use of fossil fuels, terminated all carbon emissions--if humankind disappeared instantly from the earth--this would not stop the generation of the next warming cycle...it would merely remove our influence on the warming trends, delaying the tipping point, but not arresting the waxing of the next cycle.
Will they find millions of Robert Cooks in the melted puddles? Probably not. Nobody would want one, anyway.
It's a bit annoying how conservative (not in the political sense) some pundits are about climate change.
Why in the world is the status quo climate the correct climate?
Isn't now the best possible time in the history of the world for climate change? Look at all this usable land that was once thriving! It used to be that major changes in climate led to extinctions of many useful and interesting species, but now we have modern man who can preserve and relocate a lot of examples.
The climate is always changing, and this is good for evolution. Think of all the species we would pre-extinct if we could arrest the climate! Not only ought mankind not stop it... it rather obviously can't.
Just wondering... do we know that? Or are we assuming there were large herds because there are large herds of elephants in Africa? Perhaps mammoths and mastodons were loners or ran in nuclear family groups.
I think we do know that, Synova, Basically, though I'm no expert in this area. For one thing, where do you think those millions of tusks and bones, already mentioned, came from? They were so plentiful that folk in the Ukraine built dwellings out of them, fitting various mammoth bone parts herringbone fashion into whole human shelters. They're quite impressive; look them up!
Beyond that, though mastodons (also present in these Ice Age environments) are more distantly related vis-a-vis elephants, mammoths however are virtually just hairy elephants — big brained, and I think virtually guaranteed to be highly social animals.
You know what always works when you can't control the future? You adapt. Space conditioning to handle whatever comes our way and cheap energy to power it. Too bad Robert Cook and the Lefties get in the way.
"The tusks themselves can kind of carry information about the climate, the diet — that would be valuable data. On the other hand, if they find mammoth hair, or an intact mammoth, they're the first ones that tell the scientists."
Can't the scientists use their funding to, oh, I don't know ... buy a ring sample of the damned tusks?
That's not as much fun as telling the State to take the tusks for you for free, of course.
It's a mammoth opportunity for some one.
"Sadly, you're only attracted to female mammoths, and good luck finding one of those."
I hear one named Inga lives in Wisconsin.
Uhm, mammoths didn't eat ice. If there are mammoth tusks there, then that area was once lush enough to support their grazing. I would be interested in the dating of those tusks. We would have been in the Holocene Climate Optimum about 9,000 years ago with global temperatures about 2 degrees C warmer than today. Prior to about 20K years ago we would have been in the previous glaciation. About 100,000 years ago we would have been in the previous interglacial which had global temperatures about 5 degrees C warmer than this interglacial.
They were making wine in England and raising cattle in Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period. The Little Ice Age that followed caused a recession.Warmer is better, and climate variability is natural. The link below is a concise summary.
http://www.stanford.edu/~moore/HistoryEcon.html
It works better when you just say it, which is what Groucho Marx did.
"I like a good cigar, but I take it out every once in awhile"
Uhm, mammoths didn't eat ice.
As mentioned before, Siberia during the ice age was mostly unglaciated.
If there are mammoth tusks there, then that area was once lush enough to support their grazing.
Exactly right. Also as noted earlier, there in fact was a lush, productive, herbal vegetative ecosystem flourishing on the Siberian tundra during the ice age (i.e., the most recent ice advance of the Pleistocene epoch).
I would be interested in the dating of those tusks.
Most likely date from the ice age itself — that's what the (woolly) mammoths were adapted for. (Ever wonder why those mammoths needed all that hair? when larger animals typically don't need much if any hair, due to the square-cube law? It's because it was cold out.)
We would have been in the Holocene Climate Optimum about 9,000 years ago with global temperatures about 2 degrees C warmer than today.
By then — except in a few isolated locations, such as Russia's Wrangel Island — mammoths were extinct.
Prior to about 20K years ago we would have been in the previous glaciation.
More recently than that actually. The Pleistocene ended some 11,700 years ago.
About 100,000 years ago we would have been in the previous interglacial which had global temperatures about 5 degrees C warmer than this interglacial.
Though species such as mammoths appear to have come through earlier interglacials (such as the so-called Eemian you refer to) rather well, but they're not their heyday.
I gave my dear wife mammoth tusk earrings.
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