Talk:Columbian mammoth

Mammoth

How long is the Columbus mammoth foot 107.127.28.14 (talk) 14:06, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm not aware of sources that give such specific measurements, as goes for most creatures, they would be given for individual foot bones. FunkMonk (talk) 16:08, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Timing

Reading Evolution and dispersal of mammoths across the Northern Hemisphere again, it implies that the species Mammuthus columbi only applies to remains of Late Pleistocene age. I don't known what this implies for the classification of remains of North American mammoths between 1.5 and 0.1 Ma, the earliest of which presumably were not a hybrid species (at least not with the woolly mammoth, anyway), but also implies that M. columbi is basically indistinguishable from M. trogontherii. Does this warrant changing the fossilrange in the taxobox or not? Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:25, 28 February 2023 (UTC)

Being from 2015, I it's too early to take into account the latest DNA papers, and now it's still very early days when it comes to concluding what these hybridisation findings will actually mean for mammoth taxonomy. So I think we need to wait for new publications. I can imagine it will take years for the dust to settle. Also, you removed the statement that the DNA analysed teeth were steppe mammoth-like, which I've re-added, since it's pretty important.FunkMonk (talk) 13:04, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

I think Lister is spot-on when he calls mammoths effectively a continuous metapopulation rather than neatly divided species. I'm satisfied with the content of the article as it currently stands. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, but that doesn't translate well into clean cut traditional taxonomy. The name M. columbi would have to be arbitrarily retained instead of synonymised, which is de facto the case now. FunkMonk (talk) 20:43, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Possibly More Reliable Calibrated Radiocarbon Date

@FunkMonk I'm reading the book "Vanished Giants: The Lost World of the Ice Age," and what I found is a table on pages 110-111 that lists the last known calibrated radiocarbon dates of different extinct species of the latest Pleistocene of North America, which could be of interest to you. According to Anthony J. Stuart, the latest calibrated date for M. columbi based on lab. no. "AA-2941" is 12,124-12,705 calibrated years Before Present. Your 2003 source by Hills et. al. is likely uncalibrated, meaning that it did not modify the actual radiocarbon date to be more accurate. This is something that I noticed when watching Megalonyx, in which user Hemiauchenia pointed out that people are mistakenly relying on the uncalibrated dates instead of calibrated dates (to be fair, the latter is rarer, causing confusion by those looking for latest radiocarbon dates). What this likely means is that M. columbi went extinct during the onset of the Younger Dryas and therefore did not reach the Holocene. If you feel this is incorrect, let me know.

Here's the table if you want to check it out: https://books.google.com/books?id=c_oPEAAAQBAJ&pg=PA111&lpg=PA111&dq=%22mammuthus%22+%22columbi%22+%22calibrated+date%22&source=bl&ots=VC__DXxj_a&sig=ACfU3U30Bd7qP4V6qBCf0bKIaDauIE-Saw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjYzbzFseCAAxURhIkEHa7GApE4ChDoAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q&f=false (page 111).

(Smilodon fatalis latest radiocarbon date is 13,093-13,272 calibrated years Before Present. Aenocyon dirus latest radiocarbon date is 13,560-13,471). PrimalMustelid (talk) 05:17, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Read the South American chapter, and for Smilodon populator of South America, the latest calibrated radiocarbon date is 11,630-11,961 calibrated years Before Present while Smilodon sp. (possibly just S. populator) is 9,732-10,712 calibrated years. PrimalMustelid (talk) 05:47, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Sounds right, pinging Hemiauchenia in case he has comments. FunkMonk (talk) 08:07, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Alright, do you wish to implement the calibrated temporal ranges in the articles, or shall I implement them? PrimalMustelid (talk) 00:00, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Fine for me, and we could also incorporate the doubts about the butchering site mentioned below. Note I FAC nominated this back in 2015, so everything isn't necessarily up to date, that's the difficult part when writing about topics that get a constant stream of new research (unlike more obscure topics). FunkMonk (talk) 09:05, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I think a distinction needs to be made between "last radiocarbon date" and "extinction date", due to the Signor–Lipps effect, the latest radiocarbon date almost certainly does not represent the last individual of the species, and as the species became rarer prior to extinction the number of fossils would become more sparse. See: The youngest dated fossil marks the last time a species was abundant on the landscape, rather than its last occurrence, which is highly likely to go undetected when a species is declining toward extinction. [1]. The problem is, that unlike for the woolly mammoth in Siberia, where if you find a bone because of the permafrost conditions you can be reasonably sure there is enough collagen to date the bone accurately, whether or not enough collagen is left for dating in Late Pleistocene North America south of the Laurentide Ice sheet is a crapshoot depending on local preservation conditions, and there simply aren't enough reliable dates to be sure of the precise timing of extinction for most if not all species, see Stuart et al. 2014 "Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions on the continents: a short review" [2]. Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:51, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Speaking of radiocarbon dates, I think the article is currently too credulous of the Lovewell site. It's way older than expected for a site containing human activity, given the mainstream consensus does not support dates older than around 16,000 years BP for human arrival into the Americas south of the LIS. To quote Tune et al. "Assessing the proposed pre-last glacial maximum human occupation of North America at Coats-Hines-Litchy, Tennessee, and other sites" (2018) Even more problematic than sites with geofact assemblages and bones, are proposed LGM and pre-LGM sites where flaked-stone tools are absent and the entire case for human occupation is based on the taphonomy of faunal assemblages. Recent claims of pre-LGM occupation at the Cerutti Mastodon site, California (Holenet al., 2017), as well as the La Sena site, Nebraska, the Lovewell site, Colorado, and others, have been based primarily on bone breakage patterns and the position of faunal elements (Holen et al., 2017;Holen, 2006, 2007). Because both human and natural processes cancreate cut marks, spiral fractures, and percussion marks on bone (Haynes and Krasinski, 2010; Krasinski, 2010), the evidence reported from these sites remains equivocal at best.. Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:51, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I 100% agree with you, the latest-dated fossil does not necessarily represent the last living individuals (near impossible to happen if anything). That said, based on calibrated radiocarbon dates, I think if the source for the M. columbi calibrated date (the book I linked) is linked and there are in-article explanations that latest radiocarbon dates do not represent species extinction dates, I think we should be good to go. On the taxobox, the biochronological range could be updated to "Temporal Range: Pleistocene, 1.5(?)-0.012 Ma" as while their survival shortly after is certain, stating that they may have extended into the Holocene would be WP:OR. A 10,900 latest radiocarbon date according to the 2003 source is likely inaccurate because the dates were not calibrated accordingly.

On a side note, surprisingly, calibrated dates for Rancholabrean-aged fossils appear to be a recent trend, which explains the constant past acceptances for uncalibrated dates. A lot of known extinct species seem to have latest recorded calibrated dates around the 13,000 year mark BP, very shortly before the Younger Dryas. Mammut americanum seems to be one of the few taxa to reach an earliest Holocene age in terms of latest radiocarbon date, which is very interesting. The book also states that M. primigenius has a latest recorded radiocarbon date in Alaska at 5,333-5,585 years BP. Castoroides is pretty close to the Holocene boundary based on latest radiocarbon date.

Honestly, paleontologists for the late Pleistocene of North America seem to love jumping the shark to try explaining extinction causes for the genera of the time, at least up to the 2000s. In reality, a lot of articles and books are using uncalibrated dates (a lot are guilty of this), which when uncalibrated produces extremely misleading results and misconceptions. Because of this, authors are suggesting that a lot of genera survived within 10,000-11,000 years BP, which we now know is inaccurate. PrimalMustelid (talk) 14:47, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I would agree with moving the date back on the Columbian mammoth to around 12,000 years BP. I can't find any other reference to the 5,333-5,585 years BP date for the Alaska woolly mammoth, but such a late date should be treated with skepticism. If it's based on environmental DNA, then I think it's likely to be invalid, as it has been credibly demonstrated that environmental DNA can be reworked into much younger sediments that obviously postdate the extinction date, e.g. [3]. Hemiauchenia (talk) 15:08, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh yeah, regarding Paramylodon, the book states that for Paramylodon harmani, the latest calibrated radiocarbon date based on the locality of Willamette Cave in Oregon is 14,603-14,213 years BP. I know, however, that the extinction event of the Wikipedia article states that the soil substrate in Aubrey Clovis apparently dates to an age of 12,860 years BP, but I'm not sure if this is a calibrated date. What do you think? PrimalMustelid (talk) 15:45, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

The date from Williamette cave in Oregon probably should be mentioned, but I don't see a reason to exclude mention of the Aubrey Clovis or Kimmiswick sites, which do appear to be coeval with Clovis activity, which is externally well dated from other sites. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:34, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh, Hemiauchenia, I don't think a site should be removed just because it's contested, but a source and text that explains that it is contested and why should be added. Outdated or contested ideas should always be discussed, not simply be removed. Readers who know such ideas from other sources would never know they're wrong if not explicitly debunked here. FunkMonk (talk) 16:11, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

I've added back a brief mention, with criticism. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:45, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Nice additions, there are some formalities like WP:duplinks and citation consistency that need to be fixed as a result, but I'll try to look out for that. FunkMonk (talk) 09:19, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

• Hi, Hemiauchenia, you added some details to the intro here, but the intro should not have info that is not found in the article body, and it should not be overly detailed, so could this info be moved/copied to the relevant section of the article body? Also, be sure that the citations specifically say stuff like "early woolly mammoths", otherwise it can't be included. FunkMonk (talk) 18:06, 28 October 2023 (UTC)

New paper discussing Columbian mammoth tusk lengths

See doi:10.1080/08912963.2023.2286272 Hemiauchenia (talk) 10:27, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Seems there's some useful stuff for both here and woolly mammoth. I don't have so much time to look into it, but feel free to add anything, Hemiauchenia. FunkMonk (talk) 14:41, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia, this sourced text was removed in your edit, is it inaccurate? "Columbian mammoth tusks were usually not much larger than those of woolly mammoths, which reached 4.2 m (14 ft)." FunkMonk (talk) 13:16, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

I can't verify the ref because I don't have a copy of this book, and I wanted to avoid WP:SYNTH. The maximum tusk size does seem to be considerably larger for M. columbi that M. primigenius, and the recent Larramendi paper doesn't mention a 4.2 metre long woolly mammoth tusk, and Boeskorov and colleagues in 2020 give the maximum woolly mammoth tusk length as 3.8 m The longest male tusk of Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799), when measured along the external (longest) curvature, is 380 cm. Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:24, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Right, but not having access to a used source isn't really a good reason to remove sourced text, and I don't see a synth issue, as it's two different statements. On the other hand, this[4] recent source also gives a shorter max estimate for woolly mammoths, so while the 4.2 m measurement is perhaps wrong, I'm not sure we can say that ""Columbian mammoth tusks were usually not much larger than those of woolly mammoth" is wrong. FunkMonk (talk) 13:34, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

That's the source I was quoting. Reading it again, some of the tusks they are quoting have lengths of over 4 metres. like 4.05 m, but I am not seeing any evidence of a tusk of 4.2 m or greater, other than a seemingly anecdotal account of a 4.3 m tusk supposedly seen in possession of tusk traders in the 90s by a certain Dr. V. Zhegallo. Would you be able to provide a fuller quotation from the book here? Does the book say where this supposed 4.2 m woolly mammoth tusk was found? Hemiauchenia (talk) 13:42, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Oh, so there are 4 m measurements for woolly mammoths in that source? I could only find the 3.8 m measurement said to be the longest, which I added here[5] too. Here's a photo[6] of the Lister page, a bit easier than typing it all. FunkMonk (talk) 06:41, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

The average weight and size of the Colombian mammoth

Hello everyone. I am a new Wikipedia contributor from Russia. I prefer the English-language section of Wikipedia, since everything is described here in much more detail than in Russian. The following attracted attention - the height of the mammoth at the withers is indicated at 3.7-4.2 m, and the weight is 9.2-12.5 tons. However, the average height of the male is given at 3.75 meters, and the average weight is 9.5 tons, that is, at the lower limits. I want to know on the basis of what such a conclusion was made. Thank you in advance for your reply.Cryzziermaximum (talk) 21:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Hi, these numbers are from page 82 of the book Mammoths – Giants of the Ice Age combined with measurements from this[7] paper. The average male height was added with this[8] edit. FunkMonk (talk) 21:54, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Okay, but it's a little weird. Mathematically speaking, if the height ranges from 3.72 to 4.2 meters, the average value is 3.96 meters. If the weight ranges from 9.2-12.5 tons, then the average value should be about 11 tons. Cryzziermaximum (talk) 22:39, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

But that's assuming there's an even numeric distribution between the maximum and minimum values, which is not necessarily the case, no? In any case, it is mixing measurements from different sources, so it's possible they're inconsistent. FunkMonk (talk) 22:59, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Cryzziermaximum that we should be attributing the estimates and not mixing and matching different estimations without attribution, which looks to the reader like they're originating from a single source. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:15, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Then we need to figure out how to proceed and with which numbers. I haven't read the Larramendi paper closely, it was added by Otodusm. FunkMonk (talk) 23:26, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: As the source book isn't easily accessible online, can you provide a photo of the relevant page of the Mammoths – Giants of the Ice Age book? Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:28, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, here it is:[9] FunkMonk (talk) 23:39, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

The mix of measurements happened here:[10] It seems Lister has kind of been drowned out in the process. FunkMonk (talk) 23:41, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I see an edit was made, but are those estimate's really Larramendi's, and not just his summary based on the existing literature? Also, I'm not sure it's even better than just using Lister's simpler stats. FunkMonk (talk) 00:56, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Larramendi's entire publication is about his development of equations for estimating probosicdean body masses, so I'm pretty sure that they're his own estimates. The books estimations in the page you took a photo of are quite vague. The up to 4 m claim is contradicted by Larramendi, who suggests that Columbian mammoth males could exceed that. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:25, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Who was bigger, the Colombian mammoth or the steppe mammoth? Personally, it seems to me that 50/50 Cryzziermaximum (talk) 14:13, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Also, what size did the imperial mammoth (a subspecies of Columbian) reach? I think he deserves his Wikipedia article. Cryzziermaximum (talk) 15:50, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

I've heard about a huge specimen - Archie the mammoth. His height at the shoulders was 14 feet (a skeleton without flesh) How much did this giant weigh? Cryzziermaximum (talk) 16:16, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

The "imperial mammoth" isn't considered distinct from the Columbian mammoth by anyone today. As for which is larger, said Larramendi paper[11] is probably where to look, but these size contests are usually based on fragmentary specimens and are unresolvable. Also, we usually don't attribute researchers for non-controversial size estimates unless there's a debate, so I don't think we need to name Larramendi in the article. FunkMonk (talk) 00:54, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

We can just say "a 2016 paper" it that's preferable. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:59, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

What do you think about how to discuss the steppe mammoth vs Columbian mammoth size issue in the article? These size things don't interest me much, so I haven't really followed the literature on that. FunkMonk (talk) 01:04, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I read the 2016 document at the FunkMonk link, but it does not say about the average size of the male, which is indicated in the article. Perhaps it is in the full version? Cryzziermaximum (talk) 10:12, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Pinging Hemiauchenia about this. I must say I find the Larramendi article confusingly written. FunkMonk (talk) 14:08, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

New paper on mammoth taxonomy

Discusses scope of M. columbi with respect to what specimens should be included following hybridisation study. [12]. Probably worth including in some capacity. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:29, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

And free images it seems, except for "© The Trustees of Natural History Museum". I probably won't get to this soon, so feel free to add text. FunkMonk (talk) 10:39, 1 November 2024 (UTC)