Morphology, Individual Age, DNA and Sex of the Yuka Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) from Northern Yakutia, Russia

Abstract

Abstract A partial carcass of the woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, named “Yuka Mammoth,” was found thawed from the Pleistocene Yedoma (permafrost) deposits of the Oyogos Yar bluff on the coast of the Dmitry Laptev Strait. Yuka’s AMS calibrated radiocarbon date yielded the date between ~40 100–39 000 calendar years BP. The mDNA analyses demonstrated that Yuka clusters with previously published Siberian woolly mammoths falling into clade 1 and represents ancestral to a haplotype shared by two ~18 500 14C yr old mammoths, including the Yukagir Mammoth that was discovered ~140 km from the Yuka’s site. The hide morphology in the genital area suggests that Yuka was a female. The teeth generation (DP3/dp3-Dp4/dp4) and their state of wear, season of her death (autumn) and confirmed earlier the dental development delay in infants allowed to estimate Yuka’s age as 5.5 yr old juvenile. Yuka’s tusks suggests that yuka was not older than 5.5 years woolly mammoth specimens with the similar dental age. Yuka’s missing body parts and the damage of the hide suggests that it was hunted by cave lions, but she managed to escape into a mudhole, where she died and was partially scavenged.

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