Mammoth Article
Mammoths on Wrangel Island Until 2000 BC
Okay, it may not quite be tabloid material, but Volume 37, Number 1 of Radiocarbon will publish the latest study by S. L. Vartanyan et al. of C14 dates on remains of dwarth mammoths on Wrangel Island, off the northeast coast of Siberia.
Vartanyan, of the Wrangel Island State Reserve, and colleagues from St. Petersburg University, first obtained surprisingly recent dates on woolly mammoth remains from Wrangel Island in 1990, ranging between 7390-4740 BP. The finds were remarkable for two reasons: they indicated mammoth survival on Wrangel Island for as much as 5000 years after the last known date of mammoths on the Eurasian continent, and they documented the evolution of a distinct dwarf mammoth population on Wrangel Island.
The Russian team's first Western report of its findings appeared in Nature in 1993 (362: 337-340), and last year Nature published a note confirming the validity of the St. Petersburg dates based on close agreement with Arizona AMS dating (369: 364). Interestingly, on the same page as that note, B. Rosen reproduces a painting from a pharonic tomb that he speculates may depict a dwarf mammoth, presumably brought to Egypt as an exotic curiosity.
In the forthcoming Radiocarbon article, Vartanyan et al.
present 23 dates on Wrangel Island mammoth remains, with dates ranging from about 20,000 BP to (calibrated) 2100 BC, and they describe the sample preparation techniques and interlaboratory correlations that support the validity of these dates.
In addition, we will publish a note by Paul S. Martin of the University of Arizona (author of Pleistocene Extinctions) surveying the Siberian mammoth evidence and speculating on its contribution to determining causes of Pleistocene-Holocene megafaunal extinction.
It's not quite Jurassic Park, but it's one of the more exciting articles we've published. Look for 37(1) to be available by mid-summer.
Update: the completed article is published, and also available online as a sample article .
