UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA ANCHORAGE

A R C H E O L O G I C A L
B R E A K T H R O U G H
Crossen presented the paper at the annual Geological Society of
The main question is why mammoths survived out there so long,
America meeting in Salt Lake City in October 2005.
he said.
Qagnax Cave was discovered in 1999 by residents of St. Paul
The chamber is 53 feet underground located in a lava tube about
Island, one of five islands comprising the volcanic Pribilof Island group
49 feet wide and 39 feet high, which made it a natural trap for
in the eastern Bering Sea.The islands are the most remote in North
animals, including mammoth, polar bear, caribou or reindeer and
America.
Arctic fox.
People riding four-wheelers found the entrance to the site when
“Once you got in you couldn’t get out,” Crossen said.
their vehicles nearly fell into the hole,Veltre said.
Many of the 1,250 bones recovered from fox, caribou, polar bears,
“You can’t really see it from any distance,” he said.
birds and at least one mammoth show evidence of being chewed on
Locals went down into the tube and sent a photo of a polar bear
by other animals – including chewed areas and tooth puncture holes.
tooth.When Veltre visited the cave he returned with a
Researchers concluded that the cave acted as a natural trap into
mammoth tooth.
which animals fell, some still alive, to consume bones and possibly the
carcasses of previously trapped animals.
The research project focused on reconstructing the geologic
context, photographing and mapping the cave and the faunal remains,
collecting the bones, testing the central debris cone, and dating the
mammoth remains.The cleaned and dried materials are currently
housed at the UAA Anthropology Laboratory.
The dig was funded by a Faculty Development Grant from UAA
and the TDX Corp. of St. Paul. TDX, the Aleut village corporation of
St. Paul, gave permission for fieldwork and analysis, as well as in-kind
support for a research project that began in 2003.
UAA Archeologists explore the
site of the mammoth discovery,
Qagnax Cave on St. Paul Island
Researchers brought back more than 100 bags of bones from the
cave floor, Crossen said.
Mammoth tusks have been found on St. Paul for a long time –
including one tusk in the Smithsonian’s collections dated to about
8,000 years ago – but no tusks were found among the mammoth
bones and fragments recovered.
W
oolly mammoth remains found in a lava tube cave
53 feet below the surface of St. Paul island have been dated
to about 5,700 years ago.That s at least 2,200 years
The assumption is that previous cave explorers removed some of
the materials, Crossen said.
There’s not much left in the cave now, she said.
younger than any previously dated mammoth remains found in
“We basically took all of the bones on the ground that we could
North America.
see,” Veltre said.
New evidence suggests that the survival of isolated woolly
Crossen said “I felt bad walking anywhere down there because I
Gee, that’s a funny looking tooth
While they may be a little funny looking, the
woolly mammoth s ridged molars are actually
highly specialized to break down the relatively
tough, dry grasses they ate.
Over time, as these teeth wore, the enamel
ridges stood out and worked like grinding mills.
Like modern elephants, six molar-like teeth
developed on each side of the jaw during a
lifetime. But due to the limited space in their
mouths, mammoths used only two pairs of
molars at a time.
Successive teeth grew forward from the back
of the jaw replacing earlier, smaller teeth as they
wore, moved forward, and dropped.
mammoths on the Pribilof Islands may be closely related to the
absence of human habitation on the islands until the late 18th
century when the Russians brought Aleuts there as forced labor in
the harvest of fur seals, according to research by UAA s Douglas
Veltre, Kristine Crossen, David Yesner, and Penn State s
Russell Graham.
The location of Qagnax Cave — in the Pribilof Islands, 310 miles
off the coast of mainland Alaska — makes it an excellent test case in
support of the idea that mammoths most likely survived longer in
areas without human occupation, researchers wrote in a paper titled
Last Outpost of North American Mammoths Found on Isolated
Alaskan Island.
Yesner said he kept walking by the mammoth tooth sitting on
Veltre’s desk. And thinking about the late human occupation of
St. Paul.
That makes the islands a good test case for the idea that
mammoths survived later in areas not occupied by humans. On
Wrangel Island off the north coast of Siberia, for instance, mammoths
survived until about 4,000 years ago.
“The first dates for human and the last mammoth dates are very
close,” Yesner said.
knew I was destroying things.”
Researchers said the cave’s cool temperatures year-round
contributed to the preservation of the bones and make them good
candidates for radio carbon dating and DNA testing.
“There were foxes curled up in the corner with their fur still on
them,” Crossen said.
The dates from the mammoth bones tested are so close they may
all be from the same animal; all at least 2,200 years younger than any
previously dated mammoth remains found in North America.
Yesner said there also is some funding to radio carbon date some of
the caribou bones to see if they are from the original herds that
roamed Alaska or the herds of reindeer that were introduced later.
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