What's happening?

Matthew Wooller was ready to go. In front of him was a huge tuskA really long tooth that extends far out of the mouth. which had been found in AlaskaA US state in the extreme northwest of the continent of North America. It is separated from the rest of the USA by Canada. . They knew it came from a woolly mammothIts closest living relative is the Asian elephant. The last population lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. they called Elma. Now, by sawing into the tusk, they hoped to find out much more.

Woolly mammoths' tusks grew a little bit every day. They contained something called strontium, which was found in the plants that the mammoths ate.

Scientists realised that they could look at how much strontium was in the tusk and work out if the mammoth had lived in an area with lots of strontium in its plants, or only a little bit.

In other words, they could work backwards to find where a mammoth had come from.

They worked out that Elma was born in CanadaA country in North America. It is the second-largest country in the world by land area. . She later walked hundreds of miles west into Alaska.

Find out more

Woolly mammoths lived in North America for around 100,000 years. They lived through the Ice AgeA long period of time in which global temperatures are extremely cold. thanks to their thick coats. They overlapped with the first humans in Alaska for about 1,000 years before dying out.

Scientists do not know if humans hunted them to extinctionCompletely dying out., or if they could not survive when the climateThe weather over a long period of time. changed at the end of the Ice Age.

Could this reshape history?

Yes! If Dr Wooller's method was used on lots of different mammoth tusks, we could find out a lot more about how animals of the past lived.

No! Not that many mammoth tusks have been found. Our new knowledge about Elma is amazing, but it will not change how we think about history.