Tusk analyses suggest weaning took years
By Sid Perkins
From Mesa, Ariz., at a meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology
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Tusks of juvenile mammoths carry a chemical record of the animals’ environment and behaviors, including how quickly they became weaned from their mothers, scientists have found.
As the tusks of modern elephants do, a mammoth’s tusks grew continuously from birth. Features in the ancient ivory, analogous to the growth rings of a tree, chronicle years, weeks, and even individual days in a mammoth’s life, says Adam N. Rountrey of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The proportions of nitrogen and carbon isotopes present in tusk material reflect what an animal ate and the climate in which it lived, Rountrey notes.