• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Even If You’re A Mammoth, Quicksand Can Get You

July 16, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

The date: 1.4 million years ago. The place: a large basin surrounded by mountains in southern Spain. An unsuspecting mammoth walks slowly over the land. Four meters (13 feet) tall and 11 tonnes heavy, she doesn’t worry too much about predators. That is, until her feet start sinking in the ground. Her huge mass compared to small foot surface is working against her as she sinks deeper into the unexpected quicksand. Unable to escape, she becomes easy prey. Ready to attack are two unlikely commensals: giant hyenas and humans. 

Advertisement

This is the story told by the findings at the latest archaeological dig near Orce, on the edge of the Guadix-Baza Depression. This site is rich in fossilized remains of human and animal activity from the Pleistocene. It is the site where, to this date, the oldest hominin fossil in Western Europe has been found. It’s a tooth and it’s 1 million years old. 

It is also where archaeologists have uncovered the remains of many large herbivores along with mammoths: giant hippos (Hippopotamus antiquus), giant deer (Praemegaceros cf. verticornis), giant two-horned rhinos (Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis) – you get the picture. That’s how it got the ominous nickname “elephant graveyard”.



On the bones of these giant herbivores there are marks left by the teeth of scavenging carnivores, and by the tools human ancestors used to reach the marrow inside. How humans got access to these large prey was still unclear. 

A recent study reported an analysis of the composition of the rock layers in this site and found that the upper archaeological levels were composed of two thirds sand and one third clay. 

“These fine sand sediments, deposited close to the paleolake that was in the region, would also contain slightly saline water, a mixture that explains that they could have worked as quicksand, where larger animals were trapped,” said Paul Palmqvist and María Patrocinio Espigares, the University of Málaga scientists leading the study, in a statement. 

partial skeleton of Mammuthus meridionalis unearthed from layer 5 of the upper archaeological level of the Early Pleistocene site of Fuente Nueva-3

The fossil of a southern mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis) was found surrounded by 34 hyena coprolites.

Image credit: Palmqvist et al, Journal of Iberian Geology 2024 (CC BY 4.0); cropped by IFLScience

This study suggests opportunistic behavior on the part of both humans and hyenas, attacking the naturally trapped herbivores that they were otherwise unlikely to be able to hunt. The identity of the giant hyenas (Pachycrocuta brevirostris) that dined on the mammoth was given away by the excrement that they left at the site. In case you ever wondered, there is a name for fossilized poop, and it’s “coprolites”. 

This study is published in the Journal of Iberian Geology.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Sendoso nabs $100M as its corporate gifting platform passes 20,000 customers
  2. France accuses Britain of holding fishermen “hostage” for political gain
  3. New Fluoride-Free Toothpaste Proves Just As Effective As Traditional Alternatives
  4. Life Could Spread Across The Galaxy On Cosmic Dust, Wild New Paper Suggests

Source Link: Even If You're A Mammoth, Quicksand Can Get You

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Are There Colors That Only Exist In Our Brains? Find Out More In Issue 35 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • If They Take Fluoride Out Of The Water, What Could Happen To Americans’ Teeth?
  • Paraglider Accidentally Flies Into The “Death Zone” 8,500 Meters Up – And Survives
  • World’s Oldest Fingerprint, Bioacoustics Could Give Us “A Peek Into The Language Of Wolves”, And Much More This Week
  • Please Stop Jamming Coins Into The Rocky Cracks Of Legendary Giant’s Causeway
  • We’re A Step Closer To Knowing Who Made The Earliest Known Stone Tools
  • These Little Birds Are All But Extinct – But There Is Still Time To Save Them
  • The Three Types Of Female Orgasm
  • Elon Musk Has Announced His Bombastic Plan To Get Humans To Mars
  • China Unveils World’s Largest Offshore Wind Turbine With Hub Height Of 185 Meters
  • Oldest Fingerprint, AI Decoding Wolf Language, And Injecting Life On Other Worlds?
  • “There Are Glimmers Of Hope”: Search For One Of The World’s Most Endangered Pigeons Just Scored A Big Win
  • Earth Has A 1-In-100,000 Chance Of Being Ejected From The Solar System Due To A Passing Star
  • “Necrobotics” Turns Dead Spider Corpses Into Biohybrid Robots
  • Why Even Traveling Close To The Speed Of Light Is So Hard
  • Peer Into The Universe’s Distant Past Thanks To JWST’s Longest-Exposure Photo Yet
  • First Evidence For Chubby Cheeks In Dinosaurs Challenges Our Understanding Of How They Chewed
  • The 2021 “Heat Dome” Killed Her Mother. Now, She’s Suing The Oil Companies Responsible
  • Two Of The Most Destructive Termites Got It On, Sparking Hybrid Threat In Florida
  • The Mad Gasser of Mattoon: A Story Of Anxiety And Hysteria In America’s Heartland
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version