Overview
- Archaeologist Otto Geist collected the large vertebral growth plates in interior Alaska in 1951 and the University of Alaska Museum of the North cataloged them as woolly mammoth specimens for more than 70 years.
- Radiocarbon dating obtained during recent reanalysis returned ages of roughly 2,000–3,000 years, far too young to be woolly mammoth remains and prompting further tests.
- Stable isotope ratios of nitrogen-15 and carbon-13 showed a strong marine signature inconsistent with a plant‑eating mammoth diet, which first suggested a non‑terrestrial origin.
- Researchers recovered mitochondrial DNA from the degraded samples and identified the two plates as belonging to two different whales: a common minke whale and a North Pacific right whale.
- The study rules these bones out as candidates for the last mammoths, leaves unresolved how whale bones were found so far inland—possible explanations include transport by people, past river or ice movement, or museum provenance error—and creates dated, genetically typed specimens useful for cetacean research.