A group of mammals suddenly disappeared 50,000 years ago. Ancient bone collagen might tell why

To understand the extinction of North America’s megafauna, scientists have used a newly developed biomolecular method, Zooarchaeology by Mass Spectrometry (ZooMS) to study the disappearance of mammals that happened 50,000 years ago.

ZooMS allows scientists to study ancient bone collagen and proteins that can be preserved for years. By examining the minute variations in collagen sequences among several species, ZooMS can generate a molecular barcode that facilitates the identification of bone fragments that would otherwise remain unidentified.

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History

50,000 years ago, North America was the land of Mammoths, Mastodons and sabre-toothed tigers. However, as the last phase of the ice age approached, these mammals vanquished from Earth, leaving behind a mystery to be unfolded by scientists.

Challenges faced while uncovering the mystery

To study the extinction of megafauna from the face of Earth, it is imperative that scientists study the bones that have been preserved.

Unfortunately, it is not as simple as it sounds. There is an array of obstacles in the way, one of them being inadequate preservation techniques followed by sites.

With the bones being worn down into smaller, unrecognisable fragments by exposure, abrasion, breakage, and biomolecular decomposition it becomes difficult for researchers to draw accurate results.

The way forward

Scientists turned to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC to study the extinction of large mammals from North America.

However, a considerable amount of remains preserved by the museum were unrecognisable, proving to be insufficient for researchers to study the extinction in detail.

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This is when the revolutionary technique, ZooMS came into play. The researchers used this approach to analyse five archaeological sites in Colorado that date to the Late Pleistocene/earliest Holocene period or earlier. The results obtained via this method were quite promising. 80% of the bone samples had sufficient collagen for ZooMS identifications and 73% were identifiable to a genus level. Bison, Mammuthus (mammoths), Camelidae (the family of camels), and potentially Mammut (mastodons) were among the taxa that ZooMS was able to identify. ZooMS has opened up a new realm of opportunities for research by providing a cheap and rapid way to extract essential information from fragmented bone samples to understand the extinction of megafauna that happened in North America 50,000 years ago. (With inputs from agencies)