Exquisitely preserved mammoth tusk found 10,000 feet underwater

Scientists have discovered a Colombian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) tusk 185 miles (300 kilometers) off the coast of California. Scientists estimate that the tusk, which was found at a depth of about 10,000 feet (3,070 meters), is well over 100,000 years old.

Related: Photos: a 40,000-year-old mammoth autopsy

“You start ‘expecting the unexpected’ when exploring the deep sea, but I’m still amazed that we came across the old tusk of a mammoth,” said Steven Haddock, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) and a of the researchers who found the tusk, said in one announcement.

In 2019, Haddock and dive pilot Randy Prickett, also with MBARI, scanned the deep sea off California using a remote-controlled vehicle (ROV) when they encountered a strange object: a 3-foot (1 m) tube that looked suspicious. out with tusk. The couple tried to gather the object, but they were initially only able to grab a small piece that broke off from the tip, New York Times reported.

From this fragment, the researchers found that the object was a tusk from a female mammoth. But they could not confirm how old it was or pinpoint the exact species.

Two years later, Haddock and Prickett returned to the site with a complete team of paleontologists and genomic experts. This time, using the ROV’s robotic arm, they assembled the entire tusk, which was coated with a thick black crust of naturally deposited iron-manganese. Preserved mammoth teeth are usually detected in Arctic permafrost, but in this case, the combination of very cold water and high pressure acted as a refrigerator for a meat plate, keeping the tusk in a relatively pristine state for thousands of years, according to Insider.

The preserved tusk was coated with a layer of iron-manganese (Image credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI))

“If the tusk had been found on land, it would not be so straightforward to decipher its history,” said Terrence Blackburn, a geologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC), who was involved in the research, in a announcement.

Thanks to its exquisite preservation, the researchers were able to recover DNA from the inner tissue of the tusk. Katherine Moon, a paleontologist at UCSC, called this the team’s “Jurassic Park” moment in an interview with the New York Times. So far, the team has determined the mammoth’s species, sex, age at death and even its geographical range over its lifetime. The results have not yet been published.

Thousands of similar discoveries can await scientists on the deep ocean floor. But human activities, such as underwater oil drilling, have the potential to destroy these natural treasures.

“In this truly unique, under-explored and largely underrated environment, there is a lot of value in having a habitat that is undisturbed,” Haddock told the New York Times.

Originally published on Live Science.