A partial carcass of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) with signs of weapon-inflicted injuries suggests people lived in the Eurasian Arctic 10,000 years earlier than previously thought, according to a team of scientists co-led by paleontologist Alexei Tikhonov.

Dr Tikhonov and co-authors reported their find in the Jan. 15 issue of the journal Science.

“Archaeological evidence for human dispersal through northern Eurasia before 40,000 years ago is rare. In west Siberia, the northernmost find of that age is located at 57°N,” they said.

“Elsewhere, the earliest presence of humans in the Arctic is commonly thought to be circa 35,000 to 30,000 years before the present.”

“A mammoth kill site in the central Siberian Arctic expands the populated area to almost 72°N.”

In 2012, a group led by Dr Tikhonov excavated a partial carcass of a woolly mammoth from frozen sediments exposed in a coastal bluff on the eastern shore of Yenisei Bay, in the central Siberian Arctic.

“The mammoth is an exceptionally complete mammoth skeleton with a small amount of preserved soft tissue, including the remains of the fat hump and the penis. It is more complete than other recent finds from Taimyr, known as the Kastyktakh and Jarkov mammoths,” the scientists said.

Through radiocarbon dating of the mammoth’s tibia bone and surrounding materials, the paleontologists dated it at 45,000 years old.

“The large amount of fat at the hump indicates that the mammoth was in a good physical condition. This was a young male around 15 years old, according to the tooth change model. Its bones exhibit a number of unusual injuries.”

Dr Tikhonov and his colleagues analyzed these injuries. They include dents likely from sharp weapon tips such as thrusting spears and damage to the tusk suggestive of human attempts to separate the outside of the tusk by chopping.

“These findings leave no doubt that people were present in the central Siberian Arctic by about 45,000 years ago,” the researchers said.

“Advancements in mammoth hunting probably allowed people to survive and spread widely across northernmost Arctic Siberia at this time, representing an important cultural shift – one that likely facilitated the arrival of humans in the area close to the Bering land bridge, providing them an opportunity to enter the New World before the Last Glacial Maximum.”

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Vladimir V. Pitulko et al. 2016. Early human presence in the Arctic: Evidence from 45,000-year-old mammoth remains. Science, vol. 351, no. 6270, pp. 260-263; doi: 10.1126/science.aad0554