A possible rope-making tool from the Late Palaeolithic of Europe.

The lives led by the Palaeolithic peoples are often difficult to understand, due to the limited number of surviving technological items, and the difficulty in understanding how these were used. Rope, twine, and string are known to have been used in the Late Palaeolithic of Europe, by impressions left on clay items, by depictions in art from the period, and by traces of fibres thought likely to have come from these materials. The manufacture of rope would require specific technology to the task, the nature of which is currently not known, either because we have not found the tools required for the task, or because we have not recognised them for what they are. 

In a paper published in the journal Science Advances on 31 January 2024, Nicholas Conard of the Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology at the University of Tübingen and the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, and Veerle Rots of the TraceoLab at the University of Liège, propose a model for the production of rope by the early Upper Palaeolithic Aurignacian people of Europe.

Thirteen pieces of worked Mammoth ivory were discovered in a horizon dated to between 40 000 and 35 000 years before the present, during excavations at the Hohle Fels Cave in the Ach Valley of the Swabian Jura of southwestern Germany in 2015, with another two pieces in a section of collapsed material which partially derived from the same horizon. The pieces were fitted together to form a baton 20.4 cm in length, 3.6 cm wide, and 1.5 cm thick, perforated by four holes, each of which was surrounded by a spiral of six precisely carved grooves. The object was obviously carefully made, and the grooves carefully chiselled, although it shows little use-associated wear.

Ivory perforated baton from Hohle Fels Cave, southwestern Germany with four views. Convex surface second from the left, flat surface far right. Distal end up, handle down. Hildegard Jensen in Conard & Rots (2024).

The Hohle Cave was occupied on numerous occasions by both Humans and Cave Bears, both of which disturbed the floor, leading to a degree of time averaging within deposits. The exact age of the baton could not be determined, however, Conard and Rots are confident that it is no more than 40 000 years old and no less than 35 000 years old, based upon dates obtained from Human-modified bones from the same layer. Furthermore, only one of the dates from this layer was older than 36 500 years, making it very likely that the baton comes from the later part of the window. 

Hohle Fels. Perforated baton of Mammoth ivory from Aurignacian layer AH Va at the time of discovery in July 2015. Conard & Rots (2024).

Four other perforated batons have previously been described from Aurignacian deposits within the Swabian Caves. One of these appears to have been almost identical to the Hohle Cave baton, and was found at Geißenklösterle Cave, 2 km downstream of Hohle Cave in the Ash Valley, in 1984. This baton was more weathered and fragmented than the Hohle Cave example, and split into 30 fragments. It was recovered from a layer which also produced a number of Aurignacian tools, and which has been dated to between 42 500 and 37 000 years before the present.

The baton from Geissenklösterle. Conard & Rots (2024).

Another three perforated Mammoth ivory batons were found in layers which produced Aurignacian tools at Vogelherd in the Lone Valley in 1931. One of these has two perforations with spiral grooves, and was interpreted as a gorget. A second baton had a single hole, again with spiral grooves, and was interpreted as a bullroarer. A third baton had at least one hole with spiral grooves, but was broken. Exact dating is not available for this site, although there is no reason to believe that the Aurignacian tools from here came from a notably different time interval from those from other sites in the Swabian Jura.

Location of Aurignacian sites in the Swabian Jura. Conard & Rots (2024).

Perforated batons have also been recorded from a range of other Upper Palaeolithic sites across Europe, although the four-holed batons from Hohle and Geißenklösterle are distinctive, with no examples from elsewhere, and the two known specimens coming from a limited geographical range and chronological interval. Notably, these are also among the oldest known examples of perforated batons. Later examples, from the Aurignacian and Gravettian periods, before the Last Glacial Maximum, and the Magdalenian period, after the Last Glacial Maximum are found across Central Europe, and are generally single-holed and made from Reindeer antler. The majority of these have smooth holes, but some have carved grooves similar to those seen in the Swabian Batons. The nature of these batons has remained obscure, with most interpretations regarding them as ritual objects, and the grooves, where present, as being symbolic in nature. Other interpretations have suggested that they were used for straightening arrow shafts, or working leather.

Macro- and microscopic images of the ivory perforated baton from Hohle Fels and residue evidence. (A) Ivory perforated baton. (B) Plant tissue extracted from Lochstab (transmitted-light microscopy). (C) Possible tracheid extracted from Lochstab (transmitted-light microscopy). (D) to (K) Details of the grooved holes according to their position on the artifact. Images are taken on the main fragmented parts of the Lochstab before refitting. Both faces of each hole are depicted in the order as depicted in (A) (distal hole: (D) and (H), note fracture in groove on (H); left central hole: (E) and (I); right central hole: (F) and (J); proximal hole/near handle: (G) and (K)). Hildegard Jensen, Dries Cnuts, & Veerle Rots in Conard & Rots (2024).

The discovery of the Hohle baton led Conard and Rots to re-examine the Geißenklösterle baton, and the extreme similarity of these objects led then to conclude that these were more likely to be tools, which would require the maker to stick closely to a predetermined pattern, rather than ritual objects, where some artistic license might be expected. The holes appear to be intended to have something threaded through them, which led Conard and Rots to hypothesise that they might have been used to make rope or twine, with the groves being used to align fibres in some way. Twine can be made by hand, simply by twisting fibres together, so Conard and Rots decided to experiment with the making of rope, using a replica of the baton, made from bone since ivory was not readily available (an attempt was first made to replicate the baton in wood, but it was found the grooves broke off too easily). This was then replaced with a baton made from Warthog tooth ivory.

Experimental pieces in bone (top) and Warthog tooth ivory (bottom). Conard & Rots (2024).

Conard and Rots began by threading different materials through the holes of the modern baton, experimenting with Deer sinews, as well as Flax, Linum, Hemp, Cannabis, Cattail, Typha, Linden, Tilia, Willow, Salix, and Nettles, Urtica. The baton proved to be ineffective for the processing of sinew, Flax, Nettles, and Hemp, but more positive results were achieved with Cattail, Linden, and Willow. The batton proved to be particularly effective for processing Cattail, crushing the hard outer surface of the stems, which produced (edible) starch as well as usable fibres. Many modern peoples are known to make rope from Cattail, and ropes made from this material have been found in a variety of archaeological contexts (albeit later than the Aurignacian). Cattail can also be used for food, cordage, and basketry. Pollen has not been studied in any Aurignacian layers within the Swabian Jura, but Cattail pollen is known from Gravettian layers at Hohle Fels, and the climate during thr Aurignacian would have been favourable for this Plant. Willow is known as charcoal from the Aurignacian layers at Hohle Fels.

Use of the ivory artefact for Tilia (left) and for Typha (right). Conard & Rots (2024).

The baton could be used to manufacture thin ropes, but was not essential, as these are not difficult to make by hand. However, experimentation with the use of all four holes on the baton found that it was particularly useful for making thicker, stronger ropes from two to four strands. By maintaining a regular thickness of each strand, it enabled the manufacture of long lengths of rope. The grooves help to break down and orient leaves while maintaining torsion, the tool can then be run over the strands at a regular speed, causing them to combine automatically into a rope as a result of the twisting tension. One person is needed to hold the tool and one to hold each strand, so three to five people are needed to make a rope with two to four strands, with the number of holes used determining the number of strands and therefore the thickness of the rope. The experiments found that it was possible to produce 5 m of strong, supple rope in 10 minutes.

Pulling the Typha through the holes and rotating fibres into strands by hand. Conard & Rots (2024).

Conard and Rots have demonstrated that the four-holed Aurignacian artefacts from Hohle Fels and Geißenklösterle are efficient rope-making tools, providing an answer to the question of how rope was produced in the European Upper Palaeolithic. Rope and twine are used for a wide variety of purposes by modern Humans, and all modern hunter-gatherer populations are known to use rope and twine for a wide variety of purposes, making it unlikely that the Aurignacian culture could have managed without it. The methodology demonstrated by Conard and Rots requires multiple people to co-operate on the manufacture of rope, and is therefore also indicative of a culture in which people had a well-developed sense of community, further underlining how this ability to co-operate would have been advantageous .

The manufacture of a three-stranded rope from Typha. Conard & Rots (2024).

See also...

Using molecular genomics to understand the social behaviour of Woolly Mammoths.

The Woolly Mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, is thought to have diverged from the earlier Steppe Mammoth Mammuthus trogontherii in northeast Asia around 700 000 years ago and by 200 000 years ago spread across Asia and into Europe and across the Bering Strait into North America. As a widespread and apparently numerous species living in the recent past they have left an extensive fossil record, primarily of isolated teeth and bones, but also including a number of mummified and frozen specimens, trapped within the Arctic permafrost. This has allowed a number of detailed anatomical and molecular studies of the Woolly Mammoth, using specimens that were excavated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Despite this wealth of data there is relatively little direct information on the behaviour of these animals available, with most of our ideas about the social structure of Mammoths based upon extrapolation from living Elephant species rather than direct evidence.

In a paper published in the journal Current Biology on 2 November 2017, Patrícia Pe cnerova of the Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University, David Díez-del-Molino and Nicolas Dussex, also of the Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Tatiana Feuerborn, again of the Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, amd of the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, Johanna von Seth, again of the Department of Bioinformatics and Genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, and the Department of Zoology at Stockholm University, Johannes van der Plicht of the Centre for Isotope Research at Groningen University, and the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University, Pavel Nikolskiy of the Geological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexei Tikhonov of the Zoological Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of the Applied Ecology of the North at the North-Eastern Federal University, Sergey Vartanyan of the North-East Interdisciplinary Scientific Research Institute N.A.N.A. Shilo of the Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Love Dal én, once again of the of Bioinformatics and Genetics at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, present the results of a study in which they determined the sexes of 98 Woolly Mammoth specimens from different locations in Siberia and on Wrangel Island.

 The Siegsdorfer Mammut, in the Südostbayerisches Naturkunde und Mammut-Museum, the largest complete Mammoth specimen in Europe, thought to be a male. Lou Gruber/Wikimedia Commons.

Pecnerova et al. were able to identify the sex of 95 Mammoths, of which 66 were male and 29 were female, a noteworthy and clearly significant difference. Modern Elephants, like almost all Mammals, produce male and female offspring in equal proportions, and there is no reason to suspect that Mammoths were any different in this regard, suggesting that male Mammoths were more likely to enter the fossil record than female Mammoths.

Elephants show distinct sexual dimorphism, with males significantly larger than females. As a rule of thumb, the hard tissues of larger animals are more likely to survive intact until they are buried than those of smaller animals, simply because they are harder for other animals to break down. However Pecnerova et al.do not believe that this is likely to have been a significant factor in the case of Mammoths, as all Mammoths were sufficiently large to be difficult for any other animal found in their environment to break down. Furthermore most Mammoth specimens for which data on their origins are available seem to have come from natural traps, such as sinkholes, mudflows or pools, where their remains were buried rapidly, whereas remains left on open tundra will tend to remain exposed for years or even centuries, where the action of the weather can break down even the largest bones.

Instead, Pecnerova et al. suggest that the behaviour of the Mammoths when they were alive may have played a role in how likely they were to enter the fossil record.Modern Elephants have a complex social structure, with female Elephants living in family groups with their young and each such group having a set territory which they know very well. Males leave these groups when they approach sexual maturity, and live in male groups which are much wider ranging, and less defined in structure, with the youngest males not being automatically accepted into such a group, and often having to range over very large areas before they find a male pack that will accept them - if they do so at all. The largest, sexually mature, males leave these packs, becoming intolerant of other males, particularly when they are in musth (a heightened state of sexual agitation, and range over very wide areas looking for available females.

This more adventurous lifestyle means that male Elephants, unlike females, spend much of their lives in unfamiliar territory. If the same held true for Woolly Mammoths then males of this species would have been more likely to encounter unfamiliar hazards, such as sinkholes or swamps, which females would be taught to avoid by older members of the herd if they lie within their territory. This matches closely with what is observed in the fossil record, with predominantly male specimens preserved in geographical traps, which Pecnerova et al. believe is evidence of a similar social structure in Mammoths to that in Elephants.

See also...

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Understanding the demise of the last Mammoths of St Paul Island.

Mammoths, Mammuthus spp., disappeared from the mainlands of Eurasia and North America around the end of the last Pleistocene glaciation, between 14 000 and 13 200 years ago, with some populations having possibly persisted as late as 10 500 years ago. However populations of Woolly Mammoths, Mammuthus primigenius, are known to have survived on several Beringian islands long after the end of the Pleistocene, with the last populations having survived on Wrangel Island (north of Siberia) till about 4020 years ago and St. Paul Island (in the Pribilof Islands of the Bering Sea) till around 5600 years ago. The demise of the Mammoths of Wrangel Island is known to have occurred around the time the first Humans arrived on the island, suggesting strongly that they may have become extinct directly due to Human activity. However the first Humans to reach St. Paul Island thought to have arived in the late eighteenth century, long after the demise of the island's last Mammoths, suggesting that another cause must have been responsible for there demise.

In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America on 1 August 2016 a team of scientists led by Russell Graham of the Department of Geosciences at The Pennsylvania State University describe the results of a study into the demise of the last Mammoths of St Paul Island.

St Paul Island is thought to have been cut off from the Bering Land Bridge between 14 700 and 13 500 years ago, and shrunk rapdily in size until about 9000 years ago, then more slowly untill about 6000 years ago, when it reached approximately its current size.

The previous last recorded date for Mammoths on St Paul Island was about 6480 years ago, but such dates are not generally thought to represent the last actual date a species was present. Graham et al. carried out radiocarbon dating of collagen from 14 newly discovered Mammoth remains from the island, obtaining a latest date of 5530 years ago, ~about 950 years after the previous last date for Mammoths on St Paul Island, but still ~1500 years before the last known date for Mammoths on Wrangel Island.

Map of current continents (dark gray) and the past position of the Bering Land Bridge (light gray) with red boxes indicating Wrangel Island (Upper) and St. Paul Island (Lower). Graham et al. (2016).

Graham et al. then examined a series of sediment cores from Lake Hill, a freshwater lake near the center of the island, and the largest and deepest body of water on the island at about 1.3 m. These were then examined for four different climatic proxies across the period when the Mammoths disappeared. These were the spores of three coprophilous Fungi (species that specialize in growing on animal dung) Sporormiella, Sordaria, and Podospora and the presence and nature of sedimentary DNA. The general environement was reconstructed across this period using a variety of proxies including Cladocerans, Diatoms, pollen, plant macroremains, and stable isotopes, and dated using radiocarbon dates from the plant macroremains and tephrochronology (isotope dates from volcanic ash layers).

Mammoth DNA was present in soil samples till about 5650 years ago, while the coprophilous Fungi Sporormiella and Sordaria disappeared 5680 and 5650 years ago respectively (Podospora disappeared much earlier), supporting the idea that the last Mammoths lived on the island about five and a half milenia ago. 

This date coencides with a marked drying of the environment on the island, as indicated by the environmental proxies. Species of Cladocerans and Diatoms associated with a planktonic lifestyle in clear, deep, lake waters disappear, and are replaced by specues associated with shallow, turbid (muddy) waters. 

This timing also coencides with a period of increased climatic instability recorded in other parts of the Aluetian Islands and Alaska, which would be consistent with reduced rainfall on the island lowering the availability of fresh water. Modern Indian and African Elephants consume between 70 and 200 litres of water per day, and Mammoths are likely to have had similar requirements, suggesting that any such draught could have hit a small island population very hard. Under such circumstances the Mammoths may have been forced to crowd around a few greatly reduced water sources, which would have led to further environmental degredation, causing increased erosion around the pools and degrading the water quality.

See also...

X-ray Computed Tomography studies of two Woolly Mammoth calves from Russia.            The Woolly Mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, is thought to have diverged from the earlier Steppe Mammoth Mammuthus trogontherii in northeast...

The Dwarf Pachyderms of Crete, Mammoths or Straight-Tusked Elephants?                  Fossil Dwarf Elephants are known from a number of small islands around the world; this is not altogether surprising, dwarfism is common in populations of animals cut of on small islands (as is giantism). Animals in such environments often need to adapt to...

What Nitrogen tells us about the diet of Mammoths.                                             Nitrogen has two stable isotopes, Nitrogen-14 (¹⁴N) and Nitrogen-15 (¹⁵N), which have different atomic weights, but identical chemical properties, and can be incorporated into identical compounds by...

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X-ray Computed Tomography studies of two Woolly Mammoth calves from Russia.

The Woolly Mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, is thought to have diverged from the earlier Steppe Mammoth Mammuthus trogontherii in northeast Asia around 700 000 years ago and by 200 000 years ago spread across Asia and into Europe and across the Bering Strait into North America, where they hybridized with the Columbian Mammoth Mammuthus columbi. They are believed to have been the last surviving species of Mammoth, persisting to as late as 3700 years ago on Wrangel Island, off the northeast coast of Siberia (with some claims of even more recent specimens). As a widespread and apparently numerous species living in the recent past they have left an extensive fossil record, primarily of isolated teeth and bones, but also including a number of mummified and frozen specimens, trapped within the Arctic permafrost. These have allowed a number of detailed anatomical and molecular studies of the Woolly Mammoth, although many were excavated in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and have subsequently degraded due to poor storage facilities, preventing the application of the most modern methods to these specimens.

In a paper published in the Journal of Paleontology in July 2014, a team of scientists led by Daniel Fisher of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of Michigan describe the results of a series of X-ray Computed Tomography studies of two recently discovered Woolly Mammoth calves from permafrost in the Siberian Arctic.

The first specimen, named Lyuba, was found in May 2007 by on a bank of the Yuribei River on the Yamal Peninsula, where it is believed to have been deposited by an ice-melt flood the previous spring. When found it was almost intact, having lost only its hair and nails, however it was transported to a nearby village where it was partially scavenged by domestic Dogs, losing part of the tail and right ear, before being acquired by the Shemanovskiy Museum and Exhibition Center in Salekhard in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of the Russian Federation. Here the specimen was found to be partially dehydrated, having lost approximately half of its expected water content, and found to be female by examination of the urogenital tract, and subsequent DNA analysis.

Lyuba’s body was found to have been acidified, probably by colonization of the corpse by lactic acid-producing Bacteria, leading to the degradation of much of the connective tissue (collagen). The facial region was found to contain numerous masses of vivianite (hydrated iron phosphate). Examination of Lyuba’s teeth was able to find a neonatal line (produced at the time of birth) followed by 30-35 daily growth increment lines, setting her age at the time of death at 30-35 days. She appears to have been healthy and well fed at the time of her death. An isotopic analysis of the age of the body suggested an age of about 41 800 years.

Lyuba was subjected to a full CT scan, then examined endoscopically through two holes drilled in her left side. She then underwent two necropsy sessions, in which her body was thawed, partially dissected then refrozen. In the first the teeth were removed from the left side of the face, and portions of the large and small intestine were also extracted. In the second the pleural and abdominal cavities were examined. At this point it was determined by the Shemanovskiy Museum that the body would need to be treated chemically to prevent further decomposition, and allowed to dehydrate fully.

Fisher et al. were unable to access the original CT scans of Lyuba made at the Shemanovskiy Museum before chemical treatment. However they were able to take the body to the GE Healthcare Institute in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where it was possible to scan the Mammoth’s head and neck and a portion of the right forelimb and (separately) her pelvic region and left hind limb (the entire Mammoth was too large to fit into the scanning equipment at Waukesha). A complete scan of the Mammoth’s body was later made at the Nondestructive Evaluation Laboratory of the Ford Motor Company in Livonia, Michigan (as far as Fisher et al. are aware this is the first time a Mammoth has undergone a complete full-body scan in this way). Unfortunately industrial scanners like the one at Livonia are slower than medical models, and only seventeen hours were available for the scans on Lyuba, so the resolution achieved was not as high as hoped. Micro CT scans of the extracted teeth were carried out at the University of Michigan Dental School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Lyuba was already known to have significant sediment lodged within her trunk. Her oral cavity (mouth) was also filled with sediment, although this matched the bank sediment at the site by the Yuribei River where she was found, so it is assumed that this was emplaced during the recent transportation of the body. The second necropsy carried out on Lyuba was able to determine that her lungs had collapsed, and that larger bronchial cavities were filled with a bright blue powder identified as vivianite with some clay minerals. The CT scans revealed that Lyuba’s trachea was also filled with material which had the same density as the material in both the trunk and lungs, suggesting that all three are the same.

Fisher et al. suggest that Lyuba died after inhaling mud which blocked her trachea and the front part of the bronchial system in her lungs, preventing her from breathing and leading to suffocation; this matches the distribution of sediment seen in the trachea and lungs and the collapse of the other lung tissue (in the alternative scenario, drowning, sediment would have spread throughout the lungs, which would not have collapsed. It is impossible to assess where this happened, as the body had been transported prior to its discovery, but fine-grained vivianite is typical of lake-bottom sediments.

Aspirated sediment in the Mammoth calf Lyuba, sediment with a radiodensity in the range of bone can be traced from the pharyngeal region,through the trachea, and into the lung bronchi (from the Ford scan). Fisher et al. (2014).

The first vivianite detected on Lyuba was found on her left side, which was the side she was laying on when discovered, wher a number of circular pit where filled with bright blue material. This is interpreted to have been caused by fungal growth, which has previously been documented on a number of other specimens of similar age, including the ‘Blue Babe’ Steppe Bison mummy and the Tyrolian iceman ‘Otzi’. However vivianite was also found in nodules throughout the facial region of Lyuba, and within the diaphyses of her long bones (the growing ends of the long bones in a young mammal), where a better explanation was needed.

Fisher et al. suggest that this is connected closely to the manner of Lyuba’s death. If she did asphyxiate on lake bottom sediments, then it is likely that she was in a cold, wet environment suffering from oxygen deprivation immediately prior to death. Mammals in such circumstances have a ‘diving reflex’, whereby blood is withdrawn from the skin and extremities, but the supply increased to the face and brain, thereby keeping the animal alive as it tries to escape its predicament. Vivianite is an iron-phosphorous mineral, and needs a supply of both elements to form. In the case of the facial nodules the iron comes from blood pumped to the head as Lyuba struggled for her life, while the phosphorus comes from the dissolution of bone tissue by the action of lactic-acid forming Bacteria after her death. In the case of the long bone diaphyses the iron would have come from bone marrow, which is particularly rich in iron in these areas of bone growth.

Larger elements of Lyuba’s appendicular skeleton (without maniand pedes) extracted from the Ford scan: (1) radiodense nodules withindeveloping trabecular spaces in long bones are probably vivianite crystalsformed from bone-derived phosphate and blood- and marrow-derived iron;bones show radiodensity disparity between diaphyses and epiphyses; rightlateral aspect, hind limbs on left (right ahead of left) and forelimbs on right(right ahead of left); (2) left humerus in anterior aspect,diaphysis (green) segmented separately from epiphyseal ossifications(labeled); (3) segmented radiodense nodules show through cortical bone of diaphysis (humerus unsegmented in this image so that nodules show through);common scale for 2 and 3. Fisher et al. (2013).

Lyuba’s ribcage had been laterally compressed (squashed from the sides) after death, with the greatest amount of deformation occurring on the left side. Her backbone is intact, and appears to be in life position. Her skull is also slightly deformed and compressed, which may have been aided by partial dissolution of the bone by lactic acid.

The second Mammoth calf, Khroma, was found preserved in situ, upright in permafrost near the Khroma River in northern Yakutia in October 2008, and subsequently excavated and shipped to the Mammoth Museum at the Institute of Applied Ecology of the North at North-East Federal University in Yakutsk in the Sakha Republic. At the time of discovery it had been partially eroded from the sediment, and parts of the head trunk and shoulders scavenged by Ravens and (possibly) Arctic Foxes. Thus, while in generally good condition, the body had lost much of the trunk, the flesh from the head, the fatty tissue from the back of the neck (where a fatty hump would be expected) and the heart and lungs. DNA analysis showed Khroma to be female, which was subsequently confirmed by CT scanning of the urogenital tract. A necropsy revealed she had abundant subcutaneous fat, and undigested milk in her stomach. It was not possible to determine the age of Khroma isotopically, suggesting she died more than 45  000 years ago.

Khroma was also subjected to two rounds of CT scanning, first at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Clermont-Ferrand, then at the CentreHospitalier Emile Roux in Le Puy-en-Velay, both in France. Her teeth were also extracted and micro CT scanned at the at the University of Michigan Dental School in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Examination of Khroma’s teeth enabled the detection of a neonatal line, followed by at least 52 daily growth increment lines, although these were somewhat unclear, leading Fisher et al. to conclude that she was 52-57 days old at the time of her death.

Khroma’s age, determined from her right dP3: (1) right image shows lingual aspect of a slab cut from the right dP3, anterior to the left; (2) enlargedview of the anterior root in 1; the dark line running vertically, parallel to the pulp cavity surface, is the neonatal line (NnL); (3) photomicrograph of a thin sectionof the anterior root, with pulp cavity (pc) surface at right, neonatal line (NnL) at left, and 52 or more daily dentin increments (small white dots) between them; (4) enlargement of area designated in (3), showing increments for last 18 days of life. Fisher et al.estimate Khroma’s age at death as 52–57 days. Fisher et al. (2013).

Elephants walk on a thick pad of fat with a thick layer of skin over it. The distal phalanges (bones at the tips of the toes) are believed to help distribute weight evenly within this structure, though exactly how this works is unclear. In African Elephants only the third and fourth toes have ossified (bone) distal phalanges, with these elements in the other toes being cartilage, while in Asian Elephants the distal phalanges of toes two, three and four are ossified. Attempts to resolve the number of ossified distal phalanges in Mammoths have been, to date, unsuccessful, largely as the limb tips are seldom preserved intact.

Khroma was preserved with her feet undamaged, making analysis of the ossification state in the distal phalanges a possibility. Unfortunately no ossified distal phalanges could be detected, nor was it possible to detect ossification in the metatarsal-phalangeal sesamoid (known to ossify in Woolly Mammoths), suggesting that Khroma was too young at the time of death for complete ossification of all the bones in the foot to have occurred. However it was possible to detect the synovial capsules in the foot (fluid filled capsules that form between bone-bone joints in Mammals, but not bone-cartilage joints), as these had lost their fluid but filled with (distinctly less dense) air. This suggests that the second, third, fourth and fifth distal phalanges may have ossified.

Khroma’s left hind foot: (1) lateral aspect, anterior to left,showing nucleation sites and epiphyseal ossification center on calcaneumtuber at right; (2) anterior aspect; (3) anterior aspect, synovial joint capsules ondigits, light blue; (4) anterior aspect, non-terminal joint capsules light blue andterminal joint capsules purple. Abbreviations: Ast., astragalus; Cal., calcaneum; Cub., cuboid; Ect., ectocuneiform; Ent., entocuneiform; IP, intermediate phalanx; Mes., mesocuneiform; MT, metatarsal; MT I, metatarsal I (red); MT V, metatarsal V (blue diaphysis); PP, proximalphalanx. Separate scales for 1 and 2; common scale for 3 and 4. Fisher et al. (2013).

Khroma’s skeleton was more damaged than Lyuba’s, with some of the ribs broken by recent scavenging, and a break between the seventh and eighth thoracic vertebrae, which occurred at about the time of death. Khroma is thought to have died of sediment inhalation in a similar way to Lyuba, but this break suggests a much more violent setting (the backbones of even very small Elephants are quite robust). Fisher et al. suggest that she may have been caught in a mud flow or bank collapse, which caused a significant lateral impact as well as burying her and preventing breathing.

 Khroma’s ribcage in right lateral aspect (interruption of rib sequence caused by break in vertebral column). Fisher et al. (2013).

See also…

The Dwarf Pachyderms of Crete, Mammoths or Straight-Tusked Elephants?

Fossil Dwarf Elephants are known from a number of small islands around the world; this is not altogether surprising, dwarfism is common in populations of animals cut of on small islands (as is giantism). Animals in such environments often need to adapt to different niches to those they inhabit on larger land-masses, but are able to do so due to lack of competition, since there...

What Nitrogen tells us about the diet of Mammoths.

Nitrogen has two stable isotopes, Nitrogen-14 (¹⁴N) and Nitrogen-15 (¹⁵N), which have different atomic weights, but identical chemical properties, and can be incorporated into identical compounds by organisms. Nitrogen fixing organisms (diazotrophs) tend to fix Nitrogen isotopes in the ratio found in the atmosphere, but each time the Nitrogen is passed from one...

Elephant trackways from the United Arab Emirates.

Elephants have a long and well understood fossil record, but this can usually only tell us about the physical attributes of Elephants, i.e. their...

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