The National Geographic Channel is airing a documentary called “Waking the Baby Mammoth” this Sunday. The discovery of an intact baby mammoth carcass is also the cover story of the May edition of the National Geographic Magazine. Lester Graham has more on that:
Transcript
The National Geographic Channel is airing a documentary called “Waking the Baby Mammoth” this Sunday. The discovery of an intact baby mammoth carcass is also the cover story of the May edition of the National Geographic Magazine. Lester Graham has more on that:
(National Geographic) “This is the story of a nomadic reindeer herder, an extinct baby wooly mammoth, and a team of scientists on a quest to learn her secrets…”
One of the scientists on that quest is Dan Fisher. He’s a paleontologist at the University of Michigan.
This nearly 40,000 year carcass is the most complete baby mammoth ever discovered. The scientists named it Lyuba.
Fisher flew to Russia two years ago to get his first look at the mammoth, an animal that’s been extinct for thousands of years.
“It’s overwhelming really to feel the privilege of getting to be that close to something that does hold so many answers to questions many people have.”
Graham: “This was a fascinating find, but I wonder how much has it added to our knowledge of that period.”
“What it tells us about the period is that it was really a wonderful time to be a mammoth – to be a large mammal – on the open steppes of the high north.”
(National Geographic) “For paleontologists this is a time capsule from the Ice Age. When Lyuba lived, the mammoth steppe was at its peak. It was rich with vegetation that sustained millions of woolly mammoths for hundreds of thousands of years.”
An autopsy of the baby mammoth revealed a lot about where she died – 40,000 years ago a dry grassland. Today it’s a frozen tundra in Siberia.
Dan Fisher says the well-preserved carcass still had traces of what Lyuba ate.
“It’s remarkable that we can take evidence that’s with us today, that’s at our fingertips and generate from that new understanding that can give us perspective on big questions like extinction and climate change, issues that we certainly will have to continue to face as we deal with other endangered species and with the future of our own civilization and planet.”
Fisher says the mammoth remains help add to our understanding of a related animal still around today, the elephant. And they help us better understand our impacts on other endangered species.
And Fisher says learning more about the climate 40,000 years ago can help us understand one other thing.
“We want to, of course, understand the Earth’s climate system better and one of the ways we can test the computer models that help us to project patterns of climate change into the future is to essentially try them out on the past. The past is essentially the training wheels for learning to refine these models. So, information from Lyuba and other mammoths can help us to develop a better understanding of how the Earth’s climate system works.”
(National Geographic) “Dan Fisher and his colleagues will continue to unravel Lyuba’s secrets and to search for reasons why mammals went extinct at the end of the Ice Age.”
The National Geographic program indicates research continues to reveal a lot about Lyuba’s life, and her death, which the scientists begin to piece together in the documentary.
For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.