The so-called Mount Holly mammoth (Mammuthus sp.) lived about 12,800 years ago in present-day New England, a region consisting of six states in the northeastern United States, possibly overlapping with the first human settlers in the region, according to new research from Dartmouth College.
The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) at the Royal BC Museum, Victoria, British Columbia. Image Credit: Tracy O / CC BY-SA 2.0.
The remains of Pleistocene megafauna, including proboscideans (elephant-like animals), are well documented in northeastern North America, but well-dated finds are rare in New England, with only eight examples in the region and nothing from the state of Vermont.
The Mount Holly Mammoth discovered during the railroad construction in the summer of 1848 is the most complete and documented collection of remains from Vermont, but it remains undated.
One molar, two fangs and an unknown number of bones were excavated from a hill goat near Mount Holly.
‘It has long been thought that megafauna and humans in New England did not overlap in time and space and that it was probably ultimately environmental change that led to the extinction of these animals in the region, but our research yields some of the first evidence that they may have actually existed together, ”says researchers from Dartmouth College, dr. Nathaniel Kitchel and dr. Jeremy DeSilva.
The aim of the researchers was to find a radiocarbon date for the fragmentary rib of the Mount Holly mammoth.
They did a 3D scan of the material before taking a small sample (one gram) from the broken tip of the rib.
They then send the sample to the Center for Applied Isotope Studies at the University of Georgia for radiocarbon dating and a stable isotopic analysis.
“The Mount Holly mammoth was one of the last known mammoths in the northeast,” said Dr. DeSilva said.
“The radiocarbon date for the 12,800-year-old fossil overlaps with the accepted age when humans originally settled in the region, which presumably occurred during the onset of the Younger Dryas.”
The findings were published in the journal Boreas.
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Nathaniel R. Kitchel and Jeremy M. DeSilva. First AMS radiocarbon date and stable C: N isotope analysis for Mount Holly Mammoth, Vermont, USA. Boreas, published online March 4, 2021; doi: 10.1111 / bor.12517