Yuka Mammoth’s Icy Tomb: New Findings

Researchers fr om NSU and the Institute of Archaeology & Ethnography SB RAS in collaboration with their colleagues from Yakutsk and Yekaterinburg identified the burial place of the mammoth. It was a small shallow freshwater pond with either stagnant or slowly moving water, the vegetation on the edges being odd for those times. The pond might have been a stamping ground.

The article entitled Landscapes of the ‘Yuka’ mammoth habitat: A palaeobotanical approach has been published in Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology.

The results of the investigation implicitly confirm the hypothesis by American scientists that humans may have been involved in the ancient animal's death. Ancient hunters used small lakes or ponds as natural “fridges”.

The team of the authors includes Natalia Rudaya (Centre of Cenozoic Geochronology, Institute of Archaeology & Ethnography SB RAS and NSU), Albert Protopopov (Division for Study of the Mammoth Fauna, Sakha Academy of Sciences (Yakutia), Svetlana Trofimova (Laboratory of Palaeoecology, Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, Yekaterinburg),Valery Plotnikov (Division for Study of the Mammoth Fauna, Sakha Academy of Sciences (Yakutia), SnezhanaZhilich (Centre of Cenozoic Geochronology, Institute of Archaeology & Ethnography SB RAS).

Natalia Rudaya comments on the results of the research.

A well-preserved juvenile woolly mammoth carcass was found in permafrost along the coast of Oyogos Yar (Yakutia) in the region of the Laptev Sea, and the mummy was nicknamed ‘Yuka’ after the name of the village of Yukagir, whose local people discovered it. Teeth, tusks and bone are the most common remains of extinct animals such as mammoths, but much of Yuka's soft tissue as well as its woolly coat and brain has remained intact, well-preserved in its icy tomb for about 35,000 years (according to the radiocarbon analysis).

We aimed at finding out details about Yuka’s burial place by analyzing the sediment samples discovered in the area of the mammoth skull condyles. The paleobotanical analyses provided us with quite unexpected results. We identified a high percentage of green algae Botryococcus remains (up to 90%), seeds of P. vaginatus and Batrachium sp. as well as ostracod shells and ephippia of Daphnia, which reflect the existence of small freshwater ponds with stagnant or slowly moving water exactly at the site wh ere the mammoth carcass was found. It means that the mammoth’s burial place was such a pond. In addition, we were surprised to see excessive amounts of Artemisia pollen (46%), which is significantly higher than in contemporary pollen records from North Yakutia.

Natalia explains that such a vegetation community formed due to the animals that disturbed the soils and could change the type of vegetation. The pond could have been used as a stamping ground.

In general, the paleobotanical data confirm our understanding of the woolly mammoth. Yuka lived during a period of relatively warm weather inside the Ice Age, which explains why small ponds could exist. Mammoths inhabited the area of the tundra-steppe, which rapidly degraded and disappeared long time ago. The grazing animals in the area included the bison, the horse and the woolly rhinoceros.

The pond identified as the burial place implicitly confirms Dr. Daniel Fisher’s hypotheses about a possibility that humans may have taken over the mammoth’s kill at an early stage and that humans used the lions to catch mammoths and then moved the lions off their kill. The fact is that Yuka was found with many bones missing and cuts that may have been made by ancient hunters, along with wounds from some top predator, probably a lion.

In his interview for Discovery Newsletter (April, 2012) Daniel Fisher, a renowned paleontologist, described what likely happened to Yuka on that fateful day: "It appears that Yuka was pursued by one or more lions or another large field, judging from deep, unhealed scratches in the hide and bite marks on the tail. Yuka then apparently fell, breaking one of the lower hind legs. At this point, humans may have moved in to control the carcass, butchering much of the animal and removing parts that they would use immediately. They may, in fact, have reburied the rest of the carcass to keep it in reserve for possible later use. What remains now would then be 'leftovers' that were never retrieved."

The results of carbon dating are the more striking as the appearance of the first people in East Beringia is estimated at 27–28 kyr BP, but Yuka lived as early as 34-35 kyr BP.

The conclusion about the shallow pond used as a storage area agrees with the Fisher’s description of ancient Indian tribes in North America using small water reservoirs as natural fridges to keep the mastodons they killed. It is what might have happened in Yuka’s case as well.