[HN Gopher] Scientists retrace steps of Ice Age mammoth over its...
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Scientists retrace steps of Ice Age mammoth over its entire
lifetime
Author : worldvoyageur
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-08-13 13:12 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| ordu wrote:
| They didn't retrace _steps_ , they analyzed isotopes
| concentrations in different parts of tusks, which were constantly
| growing through the lifetime of the mammoth.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Well, there is a map with a _traced_ path.
|
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/373/6556/806/F2.l...
|
| To be fair, it doesn't have the resolution to show the actual
| steps...
|
| ... but c'mon...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Yeah, this headline seems egregious in that it's not just
| sloppy, imprecise, or inaccurate, it's purposefully meant to
| mislead you into believing something that isn't true. So, a
| lie.
| teknopaul wrote:
| You can retrace the steps of x without x having feet.
|
| I think you need classes in how to read the news.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1026993142/illinois-is-the-
| fi...
| smoyer wrote:
| Maybe if you claim it in a head-line and it isn't true, you
| should be forced to perform the act indicated. I'm smiling
| while thinking of the scientist hiking through Alaska over a
| distance that took the Mammoth 28 years. Of course, the
| disconnect here was probably introduced by a disconnected
| reporter or editor.
| mc32 wrote:
| This is so bad. Words are losing their common meaning due to
| journalists freewheeling attitude towards clickbaiting.
|
| At least with "Bat-boy" stories of yore, you _knew_ it was made
| up entertainment and "serious" journalists would not touch such
| with a ten foot pole, if they could avoid it.
| klyrs wrote:
| Is it that bad? Or is "retracing steps" a commonly used
| metaphor for analyzing data at hand to ascertain a fuller
| picture about where something has been / what it has done?
| Headlines have always been like this. Before clickbait,
| front-page headlines were optimized to earn quarters at
| newspaper boxes.
| Evidlo wrote:
| You can find the map showing the path of the mammoth from the
| paper here:
|
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/373/6556/806/F2.l...
| codetrotter wrote:
| This map is in line with what I would expect from the head
| line. I don't get what the other commenters are complaining
| about. Did they expect a literal path showing exactly where the
| mammoth walked down to millimeter precision 24/7 for the whole
| life of said mammoth? This map is nice and good and
| interesting.
| sulam wrote:
| Seeing some comments about how they didn't actually trace the
| steps. Okay, yeah, they didn't. But what they did do is so damn
| cool -- science at its best. I'm kind of in awe that we roughly
| know what happened in a mammoth's life from 17,000 years ago --
| including [spoiler alert] the fact that it eventually starved to
| death at 28.
| coldcode wrote:
| I still wonder if recreating mammoths will ever be possible, and
| of course if you could, would they survive in the modern climate
| in the wild.
| klyrs wrote:
| I suspect a wooly coat is particularly maladaptive in this era
| of fires sweeping the global north...
| lmilcin wrote:
| Sure they would. The area that would support them would just be
| shifting.
|
| So what a mammoth needs?
|
| -- food
|
| -- no predators that kills them all (remember, it's humans that
| killed it)
|
| -- not too hot climate.
|
| Does it _require_ actual ice? Of course not. It is unlikely it
| lived on ice, it still needed to eat something and that means
| most likely tundra of some kind.
|
| There is still a lot of tundra today available.
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(page generated 2021-08-13 23:01 UTC)