A corpse of mammoth found in the Yukon gold mine in Canada recently attracted a lot of attention because it is really special.
The large herbivorous mammoth of the Ice Age was believed to have become extinct 4,000 years ago, but because it lived in a special period of extreme cold and frozen, many corpses have been preserved in permafrost until now. In the Siberian permafrost layer in the Russian Arctic Circle, huge amounts of mammoth corpses are frozen. The locals once used excavation of mammoths as a means of making a living, and mammoth tusks are very popular in many places.
Yukon is located in northwest Canada, bordering Alaska in the United States. Almost 10% of the land is located in Arctic Circle , which can be described as an extremely cold place. The frozen soil here can freeze the remains of prehistoric organism like a refrigerator, and store them perfectly for tens of thousands of years. Therefore, the Yukon region has always been famous for preserving the remains of ice age animals. As long as these organisms have not suffered much damage during their lifetime, they can show us their appearance after being unearthed.
It is reported that the place where this mammoth was unearthed was a local gold mine. At that time, a miner was excavating here and accidentally discovered the remains. Afterwards, an expert came here and dug out the mammoth "mummy". Experts were also shocked when they saw this mammoth because its remains were so well preserved.
This is the second relatively complete remains of a mammoth discovered by humans. The previous one was a small mammoth discovered in Siberia in 2007. The mammoth was a little smaller than the one discovered this time. It has to be said that there are indeed many remains of prehistoric animals hidden under these permafrost, which allows us to see their true face.
For today's humans, mammoths are as mysterious as other prehistoric creatures. Fortunately, unlike dinosaurs, some of the mammoths have been preserved with relatively complete corpses. Mammoth is also called long hair . Because it has long hair all over its body, it gets its name. It has an extremely thick fat layer, which is what we say, is thick skin and flesh. It is not afraid of freezing when living in cold areas. With its fluffy waterproof fur and thick insulating fat layer, they can withstand extreme coldness as low as minus 50 degrees Celsius. Their ears and tails are relatively small to minimize disseminated body temperature, and the large amount of fat deposits in their necks can serve as additional calorie and fat reserves for particularly cold winters.
Mammoth can be said to be the ancestor of today's elephants. They lived in the same era as the ancestor of humans, and the ancestors of humans often feed on mammoths and also made various tools with the bones of mammoths. In fact, mammoths have not been extinct for a long time, and the last extinction of mammoths is only about 4,000 years ago. In other words, according to current archaeological data, the mammoths may not have become extinct when the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids.
From the period when mammoth survived, it was the evolutionary era when humans changed from apes to humans, so mammoths were considered to be the companion of human evolution . However, with the improvement of human hunting ability, this kind of partner relationship completely disintegrated into the relationship between hunting and being hunted. For food and cold, people later hunted mammoths more and more for ivory.
Mammoth remains are very precious because they are preserved very well and can even be said to be lifelike. Therefore, the rareness has become one of the reasons why this mammoth remains are rare, and another important reason is that it carries a lot of information about paleobiology.
Mammoth, once one of the largest elephants in the world, was widely distributed in the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, including the northeast of my country. Originally, they were the kings of the high latitudes of the northern hemisphere, but they encountered humans. Mammoths have a long growth cycle, and the pregnancy cycle of can reach 22 months, or even longer. They only give birth to one baby in one child, and the population depends on stable external conditions.
However, the emergence of humans broke this balance. In the process of spreading from Africa to the world, humans inevitably encountered mammoths and hunted mammoths, resulting in the balance between reproduction and death of mammoths being broken, which ultimately led to the inevitable reduction and extinction of species.
Under the permafrost layer in the Siberian region, some scientists predict that 15 million mammoth remains may be buried. Due to the long-term extremely low temperature, most of the mammoth's bodies can be preserved intact. So far, dozens of mammoth remains have been found, and soft tissue and even intact tendons are attached to some mammoth skeletons.
In 2014, the world's first complete mammoth brain was discovered in the Yakut region. For this reason, Russia spent $5.9 million to build a cloning center in 2018, and plans to revive mammoths through cloning technology. Some scientists believe that in theory, resurrecting mammoths is feasible, but the process is complex and difficult.
An experiment by Kei Miyamoto's team at of Kinki University in Japan seems to be ahead. They implanted the nucleus extracted from the remains of mammoth into the mouse's eggs, realizing regeneration, that is, they obtained active mammoth embryos. The research results were published on the electronic version of the British scientific journal "Scientific Report" on March 11, 2019. The specimen used was a mammoth that had been sleeping in the permafrost in Siberia for 28,000 years. The bone marrow and muscle tissue were extracted from its body, and the genetic information was compared with the African elephant . The DNA and protein unique to the mammoth were confirmed, and the nucleus was extracted from it and implanted into the mouse's eggs.
This is not a nonsense, because as early as a few years ago, Russian scientific researchers had successfully obtained the complete DNA group of mammoths. As long as humans are willing, they can indeed clone mammoths through cloning technology, but the cost is very huge. But this process does not happen overnight, and death may occur due to many reasons such as immune rejection. The pregnancy period is as long as 22 months. As long as there is a slight mistake, it will take a long time. A few more years have passed. Moreover, Asian elephant is also an endangered species, and the approval procedures for experimenting on it are complicated. This kind of thing is impossible in reality.
This seems to be a great thing, but in fact it may not be a good thing. This means that due to the influence of earth greenhouse effect , the earth's surface becomes hotter and hotter, which causes the Arctic permafrost to melt rapidly, especially in the summer in the northern hemisphere, where large-scale melting occurs. Because mammoth is a species eliminated by the natural climate, we cannot go against the will of heaven and let the extinct species "resurrect". If the mammoth really comes back, it will inevitably have an impact on the earth's ecological environment. You must know that mammoth is a natural "big eater" and has to eat several tons of food a day.
Based on this, many scientists and people in the society believe that instead of spending a lot of time and money to resurrect mammoths, it is better to use these resources and costs to increase the protection and restoration of the current ecology, because this resurrection may not bring any benefits to human current life and future. In the state where existing species are accelerating extinction, can it be guaranteed that they will not become extinct?
In the history of ancient civilization, it is an act that the whole world has, such as the mummy of ancient Egyptian or in ancient Chinese tombs. Usually, the ancients would use dehydration and anti-corrosion or mercury to keep the body as long as possible. However, when we excavated thousands of years later, almost only some residue was left, but this mammoth was kept intact.
In theory, after an animal dies, the remains will soon decompose. Even if there are residues, only difficult-to-decompose substances such as bones and teeth are preserved, and it is difficult for muscles and skin to be preserved.
Through carbon 14 test, it was found that the mammoth cub was found dead in the Ice Age 30,000 years ago. Because the body was well preserved, it can be speculated that it should have fallen into a swamp. Shortly after the death, the local temperature dropped rapidly, and it was buried in the permafrost layer for more than 30,000 years ago.Because the temperature in the permafrost is so low that the microorganisms reproduce and move, so that it is preserved so perfectly that its body structure and state can still be seen.
Experts introduced that the Yukon region has always been famous for preserving fossils of the ice age. This is because the local climate is cold. Ice aging animals may be frozen quickly after death, rather than being exposed to air or soil and weathered or gnawed or decomposed. This is the key reason why they can be preserved intact. Even so, it was still surprising and surprising to find such a complete mammoth corpse this time.
In addition to the Yukon region, a large number of ice age animals are also preserved in the Siberian region of Russia. For example, in August 2020, a corpse of woolly rhinoceros was unearthed in in Russia's Sakha Republic, which was also well preserved.
When we finally discovered the well-preserved mammoth and extracted DNA fragments from ten thousand years ago, a new problem arose again. We cannot guarantee that it is "clean". It may be contaminated by foreign DNA such as fungi, bacteria, plants, animals, etc., and since the mammoth has become extinct, we cannot have reference data, so we cannot be sure that the DNA we obtained is normal, clean and non-contaminated. Even scientists may cause new pollution during the research process and cannot verify it with the correct data.
Scientists have discovered 30,000 years ago DNA molecules in the permafrost of Yukon, including mammoth DNA. Paleontologists isolated and reconstructed DNA, showing fluctuations in animal and plant communities at different time points during the Pleistocene-Hocean transition period. This was an unstable climate period 14,000 years ago to 11,000 years ago, when several large species such as mammoth , mastodon and saber-tooth tiger disappeared. At the same time, the analysis also shows that mammoths and yukon horses had disappeared from the earth before the unstable climate period.
Is the first time a mammoth discovered a prehistoric creature in the permafrost? After many centuries, the remains of mammoths have been excavated. Are they good or bad?
