Thanks to Jess Cockerill and Science Alert Online for the Headline.
What a bummer, the adopt a mammoth scheme run by a museum led to the discovery that two bones from the spine of a large animal found in 1951 in the Alaskan Interior are actually from a whale not a mammoth.
The DNA analysis that they were able to complete from the “adoption money” to determine the age of the bones, showed they were a lot younger than they would have to be to be a Wooly Mammoth. Not just that but the diet was all wrong, analysis showed that the animal lived predominately on seafood.
There are a few possibilities as to how the bones came to be in the museum; maybe a Whale somehow made it’s way into a tributary and maybe drifted across to the area the bones were found( unlikely due to the size of the animal), the whales bones were transported to the region by humans for some sort of ceremonial or decorative purpose or there was a mix up by the archeologists in categorisation.
Either way the name chosen for the Wooly Mammoth by the adoptee of Morris the Mammoth has now had to be changed to Wally the Whale. ( apologies I made that bit up). The rest though is true.
Namaste and Thank You for Reading.🙏
thenotsomightyom 