Scientists hung onto woolly mammoth fossils for 70 years
New York Post • • science
Key Points:
- Scientists discovered that mammoth backbones housed in an Alaskan museum for 70 years were actually whale fossils, according to a study in the Journal of Quaternary Science.
- The bones, initially found in the 1950s near Fairbanks by archaeologist Otto Geist, were assumed to be mammoth remains due to their size and the region's history of megafauna fossils.
- Radiocarbon dating showed the fossils were 2,000 to 3,000 years old, too recent for mammoths, and DNA testing identified them as belonging to a minke whale and a North Pacific right whale.
- The misidentification raises questions about how whale remains ended up far inland, with theories including transport by scavengers, indigenous use, or mislabeling of the fossil location.
- This case highlights the importance of reexamining fossil collections and may provide valuable data for future whale studies, paralleling recent discoveries of misidentified prehistoric fossils elsewhere.