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Thirty years after researchers discovered the remains of milk tooth ivory from a gypsum quarry in Nova Scotia, the discovery was conducted in the days before an elephant-shaped animal fell into a pit and died about 75,000 years ago. The habitat of this species has generated new insights.
Thanks to a fecal sample as small as a stone, scientists have reconstructed the animal’s diet and environment, thinking that milk teeth are like a browser-largely left in the forest, with bushes and branches, insects, and pollen. And algae.
Scott Cocker, now a PhD student at the University of Alberta, led the research and published the results in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences.
“They gave us a picture of our time in Nova Scotia 75,000 years ago. These plants are very similar to the plants we see in Nova Scotia today,” Cork told CBC News.
“A lot of spruces, birches, and alwoods. Spruce-based mixed forests still have a lot of hardwoods like oak. There are also wetlands in the area, which are still freshwater wetlands.”
He said that more importantly, the mastodon lizard accidentally consumed something while browsing.
Analysis revealed the earliest known remains of the Canadian bark beetle. Freshwater sponges remain in the feces. Its size indicates that the mastodon eats in late summer or early fall.
Koka said: “We are picking up other kinds of microorganisms, all of which eventually fall into the water or happen to be on the tree they eat.”
“This is what really provides us with the perfect picture. Because if we are just based on [the animal] It means to consume, we know very little about what actually happened. “
Half a cup of feces
Coca obtained 50 grams of large pieces of feces (about half a cup), which he decomposed in a dilute hydrochloric acid solution and then sieved through a series of sieves.
The specimen was released by the Natural History Museum of Nova Scotia in Halifax, which houses partial bones of two masts found in East Milford, New Hampshire, 1990-91. In addition to bones and feces, the researchers also found two turtles and a frog at the site.
Tim Fedak, the museum’s geological curator, said that dung is an ecological archive.
“What really shocked me was the diversity of his plant and insect life [Cocker] Can be reconstructed from the small sample we provided him. “
“You can imagine this milk tooth figure walking down from the high ground to the low ground, just grabbing some spruce branches and cutting them down. It happens that there are bugs on them, and some cone-shaped things.
“So you could only get a very good snapshot of that specific environment at the time.”
Screen clues
Kok said that fecal specimens and other studies suggest that this may be the best time for mastodons, providing a baseline for extinction conditions about 13,000 years ago after the last ice age.
He said: “The only way we can truly understand extinction is to look back and understand how animals and plants lived in the past.”
“What kind of environment do they live in and how do they operate ecologically? What happened? What are the factors contributing to this change? Is the climate and the environment changing? Is it human pressure?”
What enamel can show
The search for clues to understanding the extinction also inspired Laura Eastham of St. Mary’s University in Halifax to conduct research.
She is performing isotope tests on the enamel of the jawbone of one of the beasts of East Milford.
Chemical analysis can tell when it has reached maturity, whether it has been drinking fresh water from glacial rivers or lakes, whether it has migrated a long distance throughout its life cycle, and whether it has changed its diet.
Eastem said: “I did this because I not only understand what these fossil mammals are doing, but also very interesting, and because observing their response to climate change can tell us how many modern species respond to climate change.”
“So this will help us limit modeling and help us inform us how to develop protection strategies.”
Fedak said that the new technology allows scientists to observe specimens in new ways.
He said: “I’m sure that 100 years from now, people will look at these specimens, and there will even be more new tools and problems.”
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