Home range of the Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus columbi) and grazing herbivores from the Waco Mammoth National Monument, (Texas, USA) based on strontium isotope ratios from tooth enamel bioapatite

Proboscideans on Parade: A review of the migratory behaviour of elephants, mammoths, and mastodons

“…Hoppe (2004) suggested that the environment near Friesenhahn Cave too was subject to external Sr as well, possibly brought in by nearby river, and that this affected the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios in the mammoths from the site. This hypothesis appears to be confirmed by the improved Sr isoscape for the region made by Esker et al (2019). The highest 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratio was found in a bull from Waco (0.7107), which was interpreted as evidence that males ranged farther than females.…”

“…Hoppe ( 2004) suggested that the greater range of Sr values in the soil near Waco was due to an influx of higher 87 Sr/ 86 Sr ratios in waters of the nearby Bosque River. While the Sr values near the Bosque River indeed appear to deviate from the Sr values generally found in the region (between 0.7080 and 0.7093 as seen in Figure 4 in Esker et al 2019), this difference is not big enough to explain the discrepancy in Sr isotope values between the soil near Waco and the mammoth molars from Waco entirely. Instead, we would like to propose that the mammoths analysed by Hoppe (2004) Clastic sediments (0.7093 -0.7110) found southeast of Waco.…”

“…Sequential samples of enamel were collected from as close to the enamel-dentine junction as possible through computerised micromilling, after the outer enamel was removed with micromilling as well. Samples were taken from the innermost enamel, because the innermost enamel mineralises Samples from the juvenile mammoth came from 1.55 mm wide micromilling grooves and each sample should thus cover enamel growth of ≥44 days, while the other mammoths were micromilled with a 0.5 mm wide drill bit and each of their samples should cover ~14 days of enamel growth (Esker et al, 2019). The distance between each sample was approximately 1 mm and ten to twenty samples were taken per tooth.…”

“…For the micromilling, a 0.5 mm drill bit was used to take a sample of the innermost enamel every millimetre (cf. Esker et al 2019), while the MIS 5e molar was sampled serially (semi-bulk) with a 5 -10 mg sample approximately every centimetre. The micromilled samples from the MIS 3 and MIS 4 molars were too small to analyse both the δ 13 C and δ 18 Ocarbonate, and the 87 Sr/ 86 Sr, and these were therefore analysed alternately (i.e.…”

Life histories and niche dynamics in late Quaternary proboscideans from midwestern North America

“…These results suggest a broadly similar geographic scale of landscape use in late Quaternary mammoths in the Midwest to mammoths in the Great Plains and Florida (Hoppe et al, 1999;Hoppe, 2004;Esker et al, 2019). Overall, mammoths from both regions do not engage in significant seasonal migrations but can move greater distances at annual to decadal timescales.…”