By Cheryl Jahn

Mammoth Testing

Mammoth tusk tests to look at Ice Age

Jul 3, 2020 | 4:04 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – A Fourth-year archaeology student from Simon Fraser University was in Prince George today, specifically to make a trip to Exploration Place.

Laura Termes is collecting samples from a mammoth tusk held at the museum since it was discovered during road construction near Giscome in 1946.

“We’re trying to get at what was like many, many thousands of years ago, what the Ice Age was like in British Columbia,” explains Termes. “Because the maps that we’re working with right now show a lot of glaciation in British Columbia.”

She has found the remains of more than 40 mammoths across the province, which is good news because the larger the sample size, the better the results.

“The fact that they can actually say there’s stuff that’s preserved means that BC probably looked a lot different than what we think it did.”

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The idea is to get a better idea of the flora and fauna of the entire province thousands of years ago.

“We’re taking small samples from parts of mammoths and other extinct animals, like bison and elk, to get at the environment where they lived, what they ate, how old were they when they died. And what time period they were.”

Mammoth is considered a good species indicator because the amount of water and food they required every day “was just astronomical.”