A piece of mammoth tooth found in a playground on Vancouver Island has helped scientists create the clearest picture yet of when these huge prehistoric animals roamed the Pacific Coast island.
The specimen is one of more than 30 mammoth samples analysed in a new study, led by Laura Termes and published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, which suggests that the extinct Pleistocene mammals lived on Vancouver Island for much longer than was previously thought.
Scientists have always known that mammoths inhabited parts of British Columbia, but the exact dates were never completely understood.
Prior to the new study, only two mammoth remains found on Vancouver Island had ever been dated. Both lived around 21,000 years ago.
Keen to shed more light on the subject, Termes and colleagues examined 32 suspected mammoth samples collected on Vancouver Island – including a piece of mammoth tooth found by a child in the gravel of a playground.
“When we imagine great big giant animals of the last ice age being found, we might have imagined fully articulated and complete skeletons being systematically excavated. But in southern B.C., that simply does not happen,” says Termes.
“Instead, we may get an isolated molar that's been tumbled around in the water for a long time, or maybe a piece of a tusk. And these are what everyday people are encountering.”
Of the 32 samples analysed in the study – many of which are held at the Royal BC Museum and the Courtenay and District Museum and Palaeontology Centre – just 16 were deemed suitable for radiocarbon dating.
The youngest sample was found to be around 23,000 years old and the oldest was beyond the range radiocarbon dating could measure, meaning it was older than 45,000 years.
“This is really exciting because it shows that mammoths have lived on Vancouver Island for a long time,” says Termes, who was expecting similar results [to the two samples previously dated]. "It is fantastic that they could be preserved for that long.”
Termes says the study is part of a larger look at megafauna in British Columbia. Next, she plans on radiocarbon dating mammoth samples from other parts of the Canadian province.
Find out more about the study: Survival of mammoths (Mammuthus sp.) into the Late Pleistocene in Southwestern British Columbia (Vancouver Island), Canada
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