Biologic Rhythms Derived from Siberian Mammoths' Hairs
Hair is preserved for millennia in permafrost; it enshrines a record of biologic rhythms and offers a glimpse at chronobiology as it was in extinct animals. Here we compare biologic rhythms gleaned from mammoth's hairs with those of modern human hair. Four mammoths' hairs came from varying...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:3126841 2023-05-15T17:58:05+02:00 Biologic Rhythms Derived from Siberian Mammoths' Hairs Spilde, Mike Lanzirotti, Antonio Qualls, Clifford Phillips, Genevieve Ali, Abdul-Mehdi Agenbroad, Larry Appenzeller, Otto 2011-06-29 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3126841 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21747920 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021705 en eng Public Library of Science http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3126841 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21747920 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021705 Spilde et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Research Article Text 2011 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021705 2013-09-03T16:44:48Z Hair is preserved for millennia in permafrost; it enshrines a record of biologic rhythms and offers a glimpse at chronobiology as it was in extinct animals. Here we compare biologic rhythms gleaned from mammoth's hairs with those of modern human hair. Four mammoths' hairs came from varying locations in Siberia 4600 km, four time zones, apart ranging in age between 18,000 and 20,000 years before present. We used two contemporaneous human hairs for comparison. Power spectra derived from hydrogen isotope ratios along the length of the hairs gave insight into biologic rhythms, which were different in the mammoths depending on location and differed from humans. Hair growth for mammoths was ∼31 cms/year and ∼16 cms/year for humans. Recurrent annual rhythms of slow and fast growth varying from 3.4 weeks/cycles to 8.7 weeks/cycles for slow periods and 1.2 weeks/cycles to 2.2 weeks/cycles for fast periods were identified in mammoth's hairs. The mineral content of mammoth's hairs was measured by electron microprobe analysis (k-ratios), which showed no differences in sulfur amongst the mammoth hairs but significantly more iron then in human hair. The fractal nature of the data derived from the hairs became evident in Mandelbrot sets derived from hydrogen isotope ratios, mineral content and geographic location. Confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy showed varied degrees of preservation of the cuticle largely independent of age but not location of the specimens. X-ray fluorescence microprobe and fluorescence computed micro-tomography analyses allowed evaluation of metal distribution and visualization of hollow tubes in the mammoth's hairs. Seasonal variations in iron and copper content combined with spectral analyses gave insights into variation in food intake of the animals. Biologic rhythms gleaned from power spectral plots obtained by modern methods revealed life style and behavior of extinct mega-fauna. Text permafrost Siberia PubMed Central (PMC) PLoS ONE 6 6 e21705 |
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Research Article Spilde, Mike Lanzirotti, Antonio Qualls, Clifford Phillips, Genevieve Ali, Abdul-Mehdi Agenbroad, Larry Appenzeller, Otto Biologic Rhythms Derived from Siberian Mammoths' Hairs |
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Research Article |
description |
Hair is preserved for millennia in permafrost; it enshrines a record of biologic rhythms and offers a glimpse at chronobiology as it was in extinct animals. Here we compare biologic rhythms gleaned from mammoth's hairs with those of modern human hair. Four mammoths' hairs came from varying locations in Siberia 4600 km, four time zones, apart ranging in age between 18,000 and 20,000 years before present. We used two contemporaneous human hairs for comparison. Power spectra derived from hydrogen isotope ratios along the length of the hairs gave insight into biologic rhythms, which were different in the mammoths depending on location and differed from humans. Hair growth for mammoths was ∼31 cms/year and ∼16 cms/year for humans. Recurrent annual rhythms of slow and fast growth varying from 3.4 weeks/cycles to 8.7 weeks/cycles for slow periods and 1.2 weeks/cycles to 2.2 weeks/cycles for fast periods were identified in mammoth's hairs. The mineral content of mammoth's hairs was measured by electron microprobe analysis (k-ratios), which showed no differences in sulfur amongst the mammoth hairs but significantly more iron then in human hair. The fractal nature of the data derived from the hairs became evident in Mandelbrot sets derived from hydrogen isotope ratios, mineral content and geographic location. Confocal microscopy and scanning electron microscopy showed varied degrees of preservation of the cuticle largely independent of age but not location of the specimens. X-ray fluorescence microprobe and fluorescence computed micro-tomography analyses allowed evaluation of metal distribution and visualization of hollow tubes in the mammoth's hairs. Seasonal variations in iron and copper content combined with spectral analyses gave insights into variation in food intake of the animals. Biologic rhythms gleaned from power spectral plots obtained by modern methods revealed life style and behavior of extinct mega-fauna. |
format |
Text |
author |
Spilde, Mike Lanzirotti, Antonio Qualls, Clifford Phillips, Genevieve Ali, Abdul-Mehdi Agenbroad, Larry Appenzeller, Otto |
author_facet |
Spilde, Mike Lanzirotti, Antonio Qualls, Clifford Phillips, Genevieve Ali, Abdul-Mehdi Agenbroad, Larry Appenzeller, Otto |
author_sort |
Spilde, Mike |
title |
Biologic Rhythms Derived from Siberian Mammoths' Hairs |
title_short |
Biologic Rhythms Derived from Siberian Mammoths' Hairs |
title_full |
Biologic Rhythms Derived from Siberian Mammoths' Hairs |
title_fullStr |
Biologic Rhythms Derived from Siberian Mammoths' Hairs |
title_full_unstemmed |
Biologic Rhythms Derived from Siberian Mammoths' Hairs |
title_sort |
biologic rhythms derived from siberian mammoths' hairs |
publisher |
Public Library of Science |
publishDate |
2011 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3126841 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21747920 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021705 |
genre |
permafrost Siberia |
genre_facet |
permafrost Siberia |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3126841 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21747920 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021705 |
op_rights |
Spilde et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021705 |
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PLoS ONE |
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