Comments on: Mastodons Alive!

By: duskshade

duskshade — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 04:44:05 +0000

I don’t know that I would say I believe it. Having been in the Anchorage area, and camping there in the summer, I know that there is a lot of area to hide in. Most people have this idea that the Alaskan wild areas are all permafrost and tundra. While this is true in the farther north, there is plenty of area that is not, and some that is frozen only in winter. As of 2006, Alaska had only 670,053 according to the US Census… that low a density of people in such a large state makes it contraindicated that there would be any meaningful contact with any low-numbers animal population.

By: Mnynames

Mnynames — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 14:41:41 +0000

I am aware of dwarf hippos and I believe rhinos from Malta and other islands of the Mediterranean, but no mammoths. The only scientifically documented dwarf mammoths that I am aware of are the ones from Wrangell Island, Siberia and Santa Rosa Island, California, although certainly others could have developed elsewhere, and the Aegean is a good potential location for them.

Then again, maybe I just missed it, it was just discovered, or the findings are somewhat disputed for some reason. More info please, if you have it.

By: Allen Hazen

Allen Hazen — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 06:53:58 +0000

A propos of Mnynames’s post of 25 August last year about the Egyption portrayal of a small but adult looking proboscidean: mo need for a dwarf mammoth to have come from Siberia! There were dwarf races of “mammoth” on a number of Mediterranean islands, including either Crete or Cyprus, in the Pleistocene that may have survived until humans settled the islands. Since the Egyptians had trade relations with Aegean peoples….

By: Jeremy_Wells

Jeremy_Wells — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 23:42:50 +0000

My favorite is the closing line about mastodons playing tag with the aurora. Damn snarky reporters! The more things change…

By: cor2879

cor2879 — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 23:56:52 +0000

Oh Loren just wanted to say I think the whole thing with posting the old articles is really cool. No matter how many times you do it you still always get me when I get to the end of the article and realize it’s from 100+ years ago… it has exactly the effect you expressed that you are looking for.

By: cor2879

cor2879 — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 23:55:03 +0000

I have often pondered the possibility that a few mammoths could still be wandering about in the wilderness of the frozen north, both in North America and Siberia. It is one of the least inhabited, least explored regions of the world, and the inhospility of these places makes them likely to remain so. I choose to believe that they do still exist there because the world is more interesting with a few mammoths still kicking around in it

By: twblack

twblack — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:00:52 +0000

Just think if they were still around. What a wonder it would be to see one pass by.

By: L Ron Hubbub

L Ron Hubbub — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:10:44 +0000

As far as the whole circus train thing goes, last year, My wife & I were in Ireland.

Coming through the village of Claddagh after a tour of Connemara we were treated to the sight of an unfettered and unaccompanied camel calmly chewing on the local greenery.

Was this displaced dromedary a relict of a population that wandered into County Galway before the English Channel and the Irish Sea were submerged?

Unlikely, sez I.

And wasn’t the Circus in town for St. Paddy’s day?

By: Mnynames

Mnynames — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 13:32:53 +0000

A wall mural in the tomb of Rekhmire, Vizier to Pharaohs Tuthmoses III and Amenhotep II circa 1450 B.C.E., shows a procession of animals given in trade. Among them is a very small Elephant with an unusually bulbous head structure more common to a Mammoth.

Usually dismissed by scholars as being simply a young Elephant, it bears long tusks indicating that it is an adult. The attendant that holds its reigns carries on his shoulder larger tusks, and so other scholars have claimed that the Elephant is merely a representation of the ivory’s source, and thus need not be drawn to scale. The problem with that assumption, however, is that it is surrounded by other animals, all of which ARE drawn to scale.

It is certainly possible for a Dwarf Mammoth to have been captured and transported all the way from Siberia to Egypt, and it is interesting that the artist would choose to depict this paradoxical pachyderm in tandem with a Bear- another cold-weather animal. As to how likely this might be, we need only look to a later Pharaoh, Ptolemy II. Although he lived much later (300 B.C.E.), trade networks to the far north had advanced very little, and yet Ptolemy’s menagerie could boast of a Polar Bear.

To give you a better frame of reference, Amenhotep II was King Tut’s great, great grandfather, separated by just 50 years or so.

By: crypto_randz

crypto_randz — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 13:02:22 +0000

Siberian wilderness the weather is very unfavorble, very and raw. Alaskan hills are the same way, hopefully sometime soon there will be a discovery that these mastadons and mammoths exist.