Frequent contributor Charles Choi sends notes from a Yukon expedition with researchers from the American Museum of Natural History—hoping to recover intact DNA from long-extinct mammoths
Frequent contributor Charles Choi spends this week blogging from an expedition to Canada's Yukon Territory, with researchers from the American Museum of Natural History....[More]
Frequent contributor Charles Choi spends this week blogging from an expedition to Canada's Yukon Territory, with researchers from the American Museum of Natural History. The team hopes to recover intact DNA from mammoths, which once roamed the tundra over 11,000 years ago.
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Charles Q. Choi
A view of the excavation site at Paradise Hill, a site for gold mining for the past century or so, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) east of Dawson City. [Link to this slide] Charles Q. Choi
Geologist Duane Froese of the University of Alberta uses a gas-powered coring machine to extract a sample from frozen earth, with Ross MacPhee, the American Museum of Natural History's curator of mammalogy....[More]
Geologist Duane Froese of the University of Alberta uses a gas-powered coring machine to extract a sample from frozen earth, with Ross MacPhee, the American Museum of Natural History's curator of mammalogy. Froese has worked here in the Klondike for the past 15 or so years, aiming to put together a full picture of the last few million years of history in the region, back when it was part of Beringia, the grassland steppe ranging from North America to Asia--a large part of which nowadays lies submerged under the icy waters of the Bering Strait.
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Charles Q. Choi
American Museum of Natural History's mammalogy curator Ross MacPhee chisels out samples of frozen earth to help date the age of this Klondike site. Ross hopes to find woolly mammoth DNA from 80,000 to 100,000 years ago, which could shed light on as-yet uncertain aspects of their evolution....[More]
American Museum of Natural History's mammalogy curator Ross MacPhee chisels out samples of frozen earth to help date the age of this Klondike site. Ross hopes to find woolly mammoth DNA from 80,000 to 100,000 years ago, which could shed light on as-yet uncertain aspects of their evolution. To get such old samples, Ross aims for the frozen material, scraping away that which has thawed over the last two days with an ice ax and then using a gas-powered handheld coring machine, the kind used to punch holes in concrete to insert pipes. Ross jokes that we're actually digging for gold: "How do you think we fund these expeditions?" he asks.
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Charles Q. Choi
Ross MacPhee inspects a horse skull that the water cannon in the background has uncovered. A water cannon, dubbed a "monitor," is a tool gold miners use for excavation....[More]
Ross MacPhee inspects a horse skull that the water cannon in the background has uncovered. A water cannon, dubbed a "monitor," is a tool gold miners use for excavation. The powerful jets of water can cut through rock, and uncover fossils from mammoths, bison, camels, and caribou.
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Charles Q. Choi
The water cannon has exposed a variety of bones from ancient camels, mammoths, horses, bison and other megafauna. [Link to this slide] Charles Q. Choi
A horse skull that the water cannon has uncovered.. [Link to this slide] Charles Q. Choi
A bison skull uncovered by the water cannon. It experienced curious damage, almost as if a blade had driven into the forehead but later healed over. We joke the wound came from an arrowhead, although the skull almost certainly predates the arrival of humanity in North America by thousands of years....[More]
A bison skull uncovered by the water cannon. It experienced curious damage, almost as if a blade had driven into the forehead but later healed over. We joke the wound came from an arrowhead, although the skull almost certainly predates the arrival of humanity in North America by thousands of years.
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Charles Q. Choi
Mammoth tusks uncovered at the largest operating gold mine in the Klondike: Ross Mine. [Link to this slide] Charles Q. Choi
Lee Arnold from the University of Wollongong, Australia, uncovers this fossil while prospecting in a creek in the Klondike. Lee digs holes in the walls and sticks in a gamma-spectrometer probe, which measures extraordinarily minute amounts of radiation given off by naturally occurring radioisotopes of uranium, thorium and potassium....[More]
Lee Arnold from the University of Wollongong, Australia, uncovers this fossil while prospecting in a creek in the Klondike. Lee digs holes in the walls and sticks in a gamma-spectrometer probe, which measures extraordinarily minute amounts of radiation given off by naturally occurring radioisotopes of uranium, thorium and potassium. This is a key step in dating substances with optically stimulated luminescence (OSL), Lee's specialty.
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Charles Q. Choi
One of the hazards of fieldwork is changing flat tires. [Link to this slide] Charles Q. Choi
A piece of ancient ice more than 100,000 years old, some of the oldest ice in the Klondike. It may hold DNA from mammoths and other megafauna, preserved frozen since the middle Pleistocene. [Link to this slide] Charles Q. Choi
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
Wow. According to SciAm, the water propelled from hydraulic monitors actually cut through stone. The miners in Klondike will find that interesting news, no doubt. All these years now, they've just been using them to melt frozen gravels.
I think if you reread the story they said "muck", not stone. There is ample evidence in the Sierras of the reduction of gold bearing gravels that were washed downstream and clogged rivers and so on. This was from hydraulic mining that was going on in the 1870s. Between the towns of Gold Run & Dutch Flat on Interstate 80 there is a 300' high roadcut, that's what's left of the Mother Lode and the only reason it's still there is that old Central Pacific's right of way sits on top of it and I80 is on a bench. There is also abundant evidence of hydraulic mining near Jacksonville, Oregon as late as the 1930s.
I think that if you actually read the story even once, you will see in the text caption for slide 5 of 12 that they do indeed say "stone," and not muck: "A water cannon, dubbed a 'monitor,' is a tool gold miners use for excavation. The powerful jets of water can cut through rock, and uncover fossils from mammoths, bison, camels, and caribou." The hydraulicking may wash the gravels, and downstream for that matter, but not "cut through rock."
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3 Comments
Add CommentWow. According to SciAm, the water propelled from hydraulic monitors actually cut through stone. The miners in Klondike will find that interesting news, no doubt. All these years now, they've just been using them to melt frozen gravels.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think if you reread the story they said "muck", not stone. There is ample evidence in the Sierras of the reduction of gold bearing gravels that were washed downstream and clogged rivers and so on. This was from hydraulic mining that was going on in the 1870s. Between the towns of Gold Run & Dutch Flat on Interstate 80 there is a 300' high roadcut, that's what's left of the Mother Lode and the only reason it's still there is that old Central Pacific's right of way sits on top of it and I80 is on a bench. There is also abundant evidence of hydraulic mining near Jacksonville, Oregon as late as the 1930s.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that if you actually read the story even once, you will see in the text caption for slide 5 of 12 that they do indeed say "stone," and not muck: "A water cannon, dubbed a 'monitor,' is a tool gold miners use for excavation. The powerful jets of water can cut through rock, and uncover fossils from mammoths, bison, camels, and caribou." The hydraulicking may wash the gravels, and downstream for that matter, but not "cut through rock."
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