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Coal miners in North Dakota discover 7-foot mammoth tusk in incredible condition
Posted on 1/8/24 at 3:29 pm
Posted on 1/8/24 at 3:29 pm
Biden immediately announced coal mining in North Dakota must be stopped because mammoths are an endangered species.
All jokes aside. this is a very well preserved relic.
Wooly Mammoths in North Dakota
All jokes aside. this is a very well preserved relic.
quote:
The ivory tusk weighs more than 50 pounds and has been buried for an estimated 10,000 to 100,000 years.
BISMARCK, N.D. — The first person to spot it was a shovel operator working the overnight shift, eyeing a glint of white as he scooped up a giant mound of dirt and dropped it into a dump truck.
Later, after the truck driver dumped the load, a dozer driver was ready to flatten the dirt but stopped for a closer look when he, too, spotted that bit of white.
Only then did the miners realize they had unearthed something special: a 7-foot-long mammoth tusk that had been buried for thousands of years.
“We were very fortunate, lucky to find what we found,” said David Straley, an executive of North American Coal, which owns the mine.
The miners unearthed the tusk from an old streambed, about 40 feet (12.1 meters) deep, at the Freedom Mine near Beulah, North Dakota. The 45,000-acre (18,210-hectare) surface mine produces up to 16 million tons (14.5 million metric tons) of lignite coal per year.
After spotting the tusk, the crews stopped digging in the area and called in experts, who estimated it to be 10,000 to 100,000 years old.
Wooly Mammoths in North Dakota
Posted on 1/8/24 at 3:31 pm to Moon Pie
Is this like when Mark Wahlberg found a dinosaur tooth on Deepwater Horizon?
Posted on 1/8/24 at 3:34 pm to Moon Pie
quote:
10,000 to 100,000 years old
Crazy how they're able to just narrow it down like that
Posted on 1/8/24 at 3:44 pm to Moon Pie
They found an intact baby mammoth on an episode of Gold Rush last week. They sold it to the government for 2 million.
Posted on 1/8/24 at 3:51 pm to Moon Pie
quote:
shovel operator
I don't know why but this made me laugh. I know they are calling some piece of heavy machinery "a shovel." I just imagine someone down there digging with a hand held shovel and being called an operator lol.
This post was edited on 1/8/24 at 3:56 pm
Posted on 1/8/24 at 4:23 pm to Moon Pie
quote:
has been buried for an estimated 10,000 to 100,000 years.
That's a pretty wide spread. Shouldn't they have a pretty good idea of the age of the earth they're digging in or is that a 'narrow' range for these types of things?
Posted on 1/8/24 at 4:25 pm to Moon Pie
quote:
and called in experts, who estimated it to be 10,000 to 100,000 years old.
Good thing they called in the experts who were able to give that very informed estimate
Posted on 1/8/24 at 4:32 pm to Moon Pie
That dude in Alaska has 1000s of these in his backyard
Posted on 1/8/24 at 5:02 pm to Moon Pie
quote:
estimated 10,000 to 100,000 years
Posted on 1/8/24 at 5:23 pm to Moon Pie
Its hard to realize just how big those suckers were. I'm 6'2" and could not touch the bottom of the tusk of one in Los Angeles' museum.
Posted on 1/8/24 at 5:27 pm to Moon Pie
Do they slow down or halt operations when a discovery like this is made? Maybe give Indiana Jones and crew a chance to check for more fossils?
Posted on 1/8/24 at 6:22 pm to Moon Pie
quote:
10,000 to 100,000 years old.
Such a precise estimate. Do they moonlight as contractors on the weekends?
All jokes aside, that's pretty cool, but I'm excited to see when they reintroduce mammoths to Siberia in a few years.
Posted on 1/8/24 at 10:37 pm to Moon Pie
Just to try and help explain a few reasons why the dating range may seem so large (some of which has been mentioned already in this thread), in case anyone cares:
- There are multiple methods used for dating different types of objects
- Different methods can be used for dating plant and animal remains (organic materials) compared to inorganic materials
- 100,000 years is a very small period of time on a geological time scale (this is usually more relevant for methods used with inorganic materials)
- Radiocarbon dating and other methods that use radioactive decay / half-lives are generally less accurate the more recently the object was deposited
- Certain ranges of time are inherently more inaccurate than other ranges of time when using radioactive decay / half-lives based on natural events that impacted background amounts of particular elements, such as Carbon
I didn't read the study associated with this find, so I don't know which factor(s) played a part in this dating range, but the things mentioned above can generally affect dating ranges.
- There are multiple methods used for dating different types of objects
- Different methods can be used for dating plant and animal remains (organic materials) compared to inorganic materials
- 100,000 years is a very small period of time on a geological time scale (this is usually more relevant for methods used with inorganic materials)
- Radiocarbon dating and other methods that use radioactive decay / half-lives are generally less accurate the more recently the object was deposited
- Certain ranges of time are inherently more inaccurate than other ranges of time when using radioactive decay / half-lives based on natural events that impacted background amounts of particular elements, such as Carbon
I didn't read the study associated with this find, so I don't know which factor(s) played a part in this dating range, but the things mentioned above can generally affect dating ranges.
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