Fig. 1.12. Postulated entrapment and preservation of the Selerikan pony. The body was relatively well preserved and missing only the head and neck. The scenario of death and preservation that best fits the data is that the pony was mired up to its neck; then the head and neck were eaten by predators or scavengers. Later the body was further buried by the flow of silt and gravel downslope. The body was found from below, in the ceiling of a gold mine drift, and its hind leg was used to attach cables and hang lanterns until someone realized it was the mummified leg of a Pleistocene horse.
Moose (Alces), caribou (Rangifer), mountain sheep (Ovis), and musk-oxen (Ovibos) shed their coats only once a year, usually in late spring. They use the early, short growth as a summer coat; thus one pelage suffices for the entire year.
The pelage of the Selerikan pony was almost identical to that of the extant central Asian wild horse, Przewalski’s horse (Vereshchagin 1977). The hair was a reddish brown overall, with dark mane, tail, and legs. The tail had long hair to the base, unlike that of asses or hemionids. The undersides of the carcass were yellowish to white in color, and a dark dorsal stripe ran from the base of the tail to the mane. Only a short segment of the mane was present on the shoulder. It was quite black and stood erect. Vereshchagin proposed that in overall color the Selerikan pony was slightly darker than Przewalski’s horse, but most of his comparisons were made with older museum specimens which tend to lighten with age. I have seen some quite dark individuals of Przewalski’s horse, especially older stallions.
No definite age could be obtained because the mummy’s head was missing, but epiphyses were all closed; from this Vereshchagin concluded that the animal was probably 7 to 8 years old—not the time of life one would expect stallions to die. I have shown that northern Pleistocene stallions tend to suffer peaks of mortality between 4 to 5 years of age and again between 10 to 13 years of age. These ages probably mark ascension to dominance (gaining a harem) and the loss of that dominance. Alaskan fossil material indicates death was unlikely at 5 to 10 years of age. Thus if Vereshchagin’s age estimate is correct, it is consistent with an accidental death rather than mortality from intraspecific combat.
Well-preserved stomach contents included identifiable epidermal fragments, seeds, and pollen, giving us an idea of the horse’s diet (in late autumn) the day it died. Epidermal fragments and pollen both showed a predominance of grass. N. G. Solonevich and V. V. Vikhireva-Vasil’kova (1977) found more than 90% of herbaceous material, virtually all of which was festucoid grasses, mainly Festuca. They also found a few sedge parts, some dicot herb leaves, and some woody plants, but they concluded: “Woody plants constitute an insignificant percentage of the total biomass” (p. 205). Both birch (Betula), and willow (Salix), were found. There were traces of moss, mainly Polytrichum. Ukraintseva’s (1981) pollen studies from this same material showed a similar pattern. It was almost totally graminoids, with grasses outnumbering sedges 2 to 1. There were a small number of pollen grains of spruce, pine, and alder, all species presently found 1,000 km south of where the Selerikan pony was found. It was unclear to me whether these could be long-distance contaminants. Seeds found in the gut and identified by V. I. Yegorova (1977), however, were quite different than the stems and leaves. These seeds were mainly of Kobresia and Carex, both sedges. She identified seeds from Kobresia capilliformis, which today does not live in the Arctic but is a characteristic meadow grass of highlands in central Asia and Mongolia.
Interestingly, John Matthews identified a species of Kobresia seeds in the pelt of the Colorado Creek mammoth, found near McGrath, Alaska. This rather xeric sedge also grows in Mongolia. The mat of mammoth hairs were loaded with these small black Kobresia seeds, although the stomach contents (epidermal analysis) showed mostly grasses (85%) and very few sedges. Robert Thorson and I are preparing a manuscript on the Colorado Creek mammoth.
Woolly Rhinos
The Churapachi rhino mummy, found in 1972 by a villager digging a cellar, is also described in the Selerikan pony volume (Lazarev 1977c). Churapachi is a small village located on the Lena-Amga interfluve. Lazarev briefly discusses other rhino mummies found in the Soviet Union. In 1771 an entire rhino carcass was found on the Viyuy River, but only the head and two legs were saved. Another carcass was found on the Kahlbuy River, a drainage of the middle Yana River, in 1877. Lazarev does not mention the most famous of all woolly rhino mummies—those found in Starunia (formerly part of Poland and now part of the Soviet Union) in 1907 and 1929. The rhinos at Starunia were not preserved by freezing as were other mummies discussed here. Rather, they were trapped in a petrochemical seep associated with a salt deposit (fig. 1.13); they were pickled by the saline conditions and surrounded by a mineral wax called ozocerite. The original of one rhino is displayed in Krakov, Poland, and a plaster cast is displayed in the British Museum (Natural History).
The Churapachi rhino from Siberia, described by Lazarev, was a female, as deduced from her pelvis and slender horns. And judging from the well-worn molars, she was an old animal. Most of the carcass had rotted away; the lower legs were in fair condition, and yellowish fur was found in mud around the carcass. The skeleton was rather complete, indicating that it had not been heavily scavenged, perhaps not scavenged at all.
Conditions of death and burial of the Churapachi rhino were uncertain. Analysis of gastrointestinal contents in the carcass showed it to be 89% grasses, 4.5% composites, and 2.5% wormwood or sage, with the remainder diverse forb species. Lazarev (1977c) says that this is similar to plant material taken from the teeth of a different woolly rhino fossil by Garut, Metel’tseva, and Tikhomirov (1970). I have also extracted plant fragments from the large infundibula of a Siberian woolly rhino skull in the American Museum of Natural History and found, from analysis of the cuticle fragments, mostly grasses: 96% grasses, 2% moss, and 2% forbes.
Fig. 1.13. One of the Starunia woolly rhinos (Coelodonta).
Fig. 1.14. Nasal horns of the woolly rhino (Coelodonta). These horns are almost flat in cross section (top). If woolly rhinos were like living rhinos, the nasal horn of the female was longer and more slender, as in the above comparison. (I do not believe the actual sexes of these two specimens are known.) Only six or seven of these horns have been found. One is now in the British Museum of Natural History, one in the Zoological Museum in Helsinki, one in the Natural History Museum in Krakov, Poland (the elongated one shown here, with 28 annuli), and several in the Soviet Union, both in the Zoological Museum in Leningrad and the Paleontological Museum in Moscow. The shorter (bottom) of the two pictured was illustrated by Pfitzenmayer 1926.
Fig. 1.15. Woolly rhino. This species lived across Eurasia during the latter part of the Pleistocene, but no rhino fossils have been found in Alaska. Woolly rhinos appear in Paleolithic art, and this one is from Rouffignac Cave in France. The anterior edge of the nasal horn was worn into bevels with left-right facets from head-swipe movements on the ground. The function of these movements is unknown. The upper lip was quite wide, indicating a grazing adaptation. The mummified woolly rhino head was found in Siberia and is now at the Zoological Museum in Leningrad.
To my knowledge, the Churapachi specimen is the first woolly rhino mummy in which horns have been found in place. The large anterior nasal horn is flattened laterally and is almost 1,300 mm long (fig. 1.14). In contrast, the frontal horn is short and conical (fig. 1.15). Over half a dozen, long, flat woolly rhino horns have been found, but it was impossible to tell whether these had once been oval and had simply weathered or decomposed on their lateral surfaces or whether they had indeed been rather flat in cross section when the animal was alive. No living rhino has a flattened horn. I think the Churapachi rhino has resolved that issue—the horns were indeed flat-sided.
The woolly rhino species (Coelodonta antiquitatis) did not reach Alaska; at least no Alaskan rhino bones have yet been found. However, they did live in the far north of Eurasia for tens of thousands of years, through the late Pleistocene. Smaller than living rhinos and relatively lo
ng legged, the woolly rhino had a long, soft pelt, somewhat like the mammoth. Its upper lip was wide, like the white rhino (Ceratotherium) of Africa, and we know, again like the African white rhino, that the woolly rhino was mainly a grazer (fig. 1.15). Enamel patterns on its cheek teeth are very complex, and the teeth are high crowned. Why its range did not extend into Alaska and the Yukon Territory is a puzzle. We know very little about its biology; perhaps some day a well-excavated woolly rhinoceros mummy will supply the critical pieces of information we now lack.
The Alaskan Frozen Mummies
Other Pleistocene mummies have been found in the Soviet Union and Alaska. A large, mature male bison (fig. 1.16) was found in 1952 at Dome Creek, near Fairbanks. A date of 28,000 yr B.P. (L-127) was 41 The Curse of the Frozen Mammoths obtained from this bison. The partial carcass of a female bison (figs. 1.17, 1.18) was found in 1952 on Fairbanks Creek and reported by Flerov (1977). The date on this specimen was 11,950 +/− 135 (ST 1633). Both specimens were excavated using a hydraulic mining monitor, with the loss of much associated information. Like Blue Babe, the Dome Creek bison appears to have been incompletely scavenged; it is now a central part of the Smithsonian Institution’s Pleistocene Alaska display.
As best I can discern, only one partial Pleistocene bison mummy has been found in Siberia. This is a young (two-and-a-half-year-old) female found on the Indigirka River (Flerov 1977), dated at 29,500 +/− 1000 (SOAK1007). Frozen mummies of legs, skins, hair, and horn sheaths have also been found in both Siberia and Alaska (fig. 1.19).
Fig. 1.16. Dome Creek mummy. The only other large bull steppe bison mummy found in Alaska came from Dome Creek in 1952.
In general, the number of frozen mummies discovered and the quality of scientific work done on those discoveries have been much greater in the Soviet Union than in Alaska. Of course, the Soviet Union simply has a much larger area of unglaciated northern Pleistocene sediments (fig. 1.20), but that is not the whole story. Several mummies were discovered in Alaska (fig. 1.21) during the first half of this century: parts of a baby mammoth named Effie were found in the Fairbanks mining distinct and dated 21,300 ± 1300 (fig. 1.22). But we have only the partial skin, one leg, the neck and head, and proximal part of the trunk; we know virtually nothing about it. The two partial mummies of bison found in 1952 are only dried carcasses, and little information was retrieved about their pelage, the circumstances of death, or burial.
Fig. 1.17. Fairbanks Creek mummy, a female bison (F:AM 2177) found 1952. Judging by the horn annuli, she was 7 years old when she died. The seventh year segment was 13 mm wide; the sixth, 17 mm; fifth, 22 mm; forth, 25 mm; third, 64 mm; first and second combined were 350 mm, for a total of about 520 mm combined length around the longest outer margin. The hoof had three broad segments: 30 mm, 32 mm, and 32 mm (proximal to distal). The hoof and horn annuli appear to be from an autumn or winter animal. The bison showed a great deal of oxidized fat and was moderately well scavenged. She was apparently lying on her left side, with that part on the cold ground, as it is the left side that was best preserved. (head is shown in the next figure)
Fig. 1.18. Head of Fairbanks Creek mummy (F:AM 2177). Skull cap and horns pictured in fig. 1.17 are shown inserted into mummified neck and lower head.
Fig. 1.19. Mummified large mammal legs from interior Alaska. Legs of large mammals are the most commonly mummified parts. These legs were all found in the Fairbanks area: (a) Alces F:AM A-274-4003 Little Eldorado Creek 1940; (b) Alces F:AM A-252-8493 Engineer Creek 1939; (c) Bison F:AM 1641 Cleary Creek 1936; (d) Bison F:AM 1640 Goldstream Creek 1936; (e) Rangifer F:AM BX 54 Upper Cleary Creek 1945; (f) Bison (no number) Upper Cleary Creek 1934; (g) Rangifer F:AM A-481-4414 Tofty 1948; (h) Equus F:AM A-119-600A Ester Creek 1937; Equus F:AM-A-1638 Goldstream Creek 1936; Equus F:AM A-1639 Goldstream (no date).
This list continues. There are several partial carcasses of the now-extinct stag-moose, probably Alces (Cervalces) latifrons, one (F:AM 274-4002) discovered in 1940 (fig. 1.23) and another F:AM 274-4001) in 1942 (fig. 1.24). Still other moose were discovered in 1980 (fig. 1.25) near Livengood, and radiocarbon dated at 32,040 + 870/ − 980 yr B.P. (DIC-3090). An almost complete mummy of the extinct helmeted musk-ox (Bootherium bombifrons) cow (F:AM A-293-5268) was collected on Fairbanks Creek in 1940 (McDonald 1984). Numerous legs of horses, bison, moose, and caribou were found during the peak gold mining era in Alaska. The mummified carcasses of a number of small mammals such as a ground squirrels (Spermophillus), mice (Microtus), and a pika (Ochotona) have also been found (Guthrie 1973; fig. 1.26), but unfortunately no studies were made of the sediments in which they were located, of their gut contents, or of other elements that might have provided valuable information.
Fig. 1.20. Beringian mummy localities. Most of the Siberian and Alaskan locations of frozen Pleistocene large mammal mummies discussed in this book are shown here. Their distribution clusters within the zone of continuous permafrost and, in the case of Alaska, slightly south of it. In Alaska the discovery of Pleistocene mummies is mainly correlated with placer mining activity in the Fairbanks area. The finds of mammoths are (1) Yuribei, 1971; (2) Taimyr, 1948; (3) Khatanga, 1977; (4) Adams, 1799; (5) Berelekh, 1970; (6) Terekyakh, 1971; (7) Dima, 1977; (8) Shandrin, 1971; (9) Berezovka, 1900; (10) Quackenbush, 1907; (11) Fairbanks Creek, 1948. The bison finds are (12) Mylakhchyn, 1971; (13) Dome Creek, 1952; (14) Fairbanks Creek, 1952; (15) Pearl Creek, 1979. Only one well-preserved horse was found on the (16) Selerikan River. At least three partial moose mummies have been found in the Fairbanks area (17) and one helmeted musk-ox mummy (18) from Dome Creek.
Fig. 1.21. Fossil localities near Fairbanks, Alaska. Most Pleistocene bones and mummies in this area have come from placer mines on or near the creeks shown here. Pearl Creek, where Blue Babe was found, is also shown.
Fig. 1.22. Partial baby mammoth named Effie. the head and attached left leg of a young mammoth (F:AM 99921) was found at Fairbanks Creek in 1948. This animal died in its first year of life, judging from its size (an estimated 1 m at the shoulder—only slightly larger than Dima).
Fig. 1.23. Little Eldorado Creek stag-moose mummy (1940). This mummy (F:AM A-274–4002) was a yearling bull, judging by the small antler size. Large amounts of oxidized fat and the presence of an antler suggest a fall to early winter death. There is no date on this mummy.
Fig. 1.24. Little Eldorado Creek stag-moose mummy (1942). This moose (F:AM A-274–4001) is a female; four small teats can be seen. The epiphyses had come off the bones of the left leg so we know this was a young animal. The tail is well preserved (sans hair); it is 22.5 cm around the curve. This moose is undated.
The reason behind most of these lost opportunities is understandable. Miners discovered the majority of these mummies, and during the first half of this century most of the people mining in Alaska were new to the north. Mammoths were a little-known curiosity and few miners were acquainted with the issues that made this material valuable. Most were not even aware of scientific interest in the creatures, much less the importance of the dirt in which they were found. Mining techniques focused on efficient removal of the silt overburden that contained the frozen mummies. Large jets of water from “guns” or “monitors” were sprayed on the exposure to hasten thaw and wash away the silt. One can recognize a mummy coming out of the silt during this process, but to preserve as much information as possible, the jet of water has to be diverted at the very moment the overwhelming inclination is to spray harder and free it from the earth. But a mummy “excavated” this way, washed clean with a monitor, is a little like the dust jacket of the Dead Sea Scrolls without the parchment paper. It is a flashy find, but the essential story is lost.
Fig. 1.25. Livengood moose mummies. Parts of at least two moose (UA V-64) mummies were found in the Livengood mining district at 60.5 mi Elliot Highway in 1980. The skull belongs not to Alces alces, but to the earlier Alces (Cervalces) latifrons (see box). The skull is broken along the frontal sutures and seems to correspond with the age of the large ramus. Tooth
wear on that specimen places it somewhere between 4 to 6 years of age. The arrows point to bumps on antler portions in the “velvet” skin. The antler itself is poorly ossified. Both the incomplete ossification and the bumps which have not turned into tines suggest a May–June death. The M1 on the small ramus has erupted and is in wear, but the M2 has not erupted. This indicates a moose of about 5 months in age—an autumn death. All parts have been heavily scavenged; few edible parts remain.
Fig. 1.26. Other mummies from the Fairbanks area. Of three small mammals and the foot of a young mammoth found in the Pleistocene mucks, none is dated. The mammoth foot (F:AM 5001), upper left, was found in 1940 in Fairbanks Creek. The snowshoe hare, Lepus (F:AM 99926), upper right, was found on Fairbanks Creek in 1949. A ground squirrel, Spermophilus (F:AM 7177), lower left, was collected in 1939 in Eva Creek. In the box, at a different scale, is a pika, Ochotona. The ground squirrel is on display at the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks.
Fortunately, some Alaskan miners are now aware of the importance of saving secondary information. One of them discovered Blue Babe.
2
UNEARTHING BLUE BABE
The Discovery
In July 1979 Walter Roman discovered the feet of a large mammal protruding from the frozen muck at his placer gold mine north of Fairbanks, Alaska (fig. 2.1). As the local specialist on Pleistocene mammals, I was asked to visit the site, so Dick Reger, a geologist from the Alaska Geological Survey, and I drove out to the mine. Upon seeing the hooves, I recognized that the animal was a frozen bison mummy (fig. 2.2). And not only were the bones preserved, but red muscle and black hair were sticking out of the bank.
Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe Page 5