Migration of Alaska’s earliest people linked to woolly mammoth’s movements

Analysis of a 14,000-year-old tusk in Alaska helped scientists trace the movements of a woolly mammoth, revealing humans likely settled where the animals roamed.

Editor’s note: Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more. Early human settlements in what is now Alaska tracked closely with the movements of a female woolly mammoth that lived 14,000 years ago, according to a new study. The animal ranged about 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) from northwestern Canada to interior Alaska during her lifetime. The revelation sheds light on the relationship between the prehistoric giants and some of the first people to make their way across the Bering Land Bridge, suggesting that humans set up their seasonal hunting camps where woolly mammoths were known to gather. Researchers from the United States and Canada established the connection between the two species thanks to a new tool for isotope analysis, an ancient tusk and a map of archaeological sites in Alaska. The tusk belonged to a woolly mammoth later named Élmayųujey’eh or, for short, Elma. The specimen was discovered in 2009 at the Swan Point archaeological site in central Alaska. The research began, said lead author Audrey Rowe, a doctoral student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, after the arrival of a “cutting-edge,” high-precision tool at the institution’s Alaska Stable Isotope Facility that breaks down samples to analyze strontium isotopes — chemical traces that reveal details of an animal’s life. Rowe’s adviser, Matthew Wooller, used the same method to identify the movements of an adult male mammoth for a paper published in August 2021. Wooller is the study’s senior study author, a professor at the university’s College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences, and the director of the isotope facility.