Recently, archeologists excavated the first well-preserved mastodon ever discovered in Iowa. The 13,000-year-old specimen was found on a farm in Wayne County about 80 miles south of Des Moines. The nearly 10-foot- tall, six-ton creatures roamed Iowa and much of North America during the Pleistocene (Ice Age), beginning 3.5 million years ago. They became extinct about 10,000 years ago. Why did this enormously successful species disap- pear? Well, apparently, we ate them.
When the Wayne County mastodon was alive, probably just a few thousand people lived in what is now North America. Reportedly, Ice Age humans had a saying: How do you eat a hairy, 6-ton mastodon? One bite at a time.
“We’re really hoping to find evidence of human interaction with this creature,” state archeologist, John Doershuk told National Pub- lic Radio. “Perhaps the projectile points and knives that were used to kill the animal and do initial butchering.”
Dr. Doershuk’s bloodthirsty fascination is understandable considering that archeologists are typically ghoulish types, professionally obsessed with ancient dead things they dig up and re-assemble for public display. But per- haps, this primal fixation with slaughtering and eating the giant tuskers suggests a leftover genetic mandate, lurking in the dark regions of our DNA. The Wayne County farmer on whose land the remains was discovered donated it to the Prairie Trails Museum in Corydon anon- ymously. Evidently, he didn’t want amateur bone hunters tromping over his fields, hacking up his soy beans, hoping to unearth their own morsel of mastodon.
Mastodons were ancient creatures. But they weren’t dinosaurs. There is evidence showing their cousins the woolly mammoths lived in certain remote locations as lately as 4,000 years ago. In 1804, when Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark west to document the Louisiana Purchase, he fully expected them to find live mastodon herds, numerous as bison. And unlike dinosaur bones, mastodon bones are relatively common. Periodically, frozen mammoths are still discovered in Russia or Alaska.
Now, with advances in genome mapping, couldn’t it be possible to clone a mastodon from these ancient specimens (and satisfy our prim- itive hunger)? Wouldn’t it be cool to see a real woolly mammoth or a long-tusked mastodon strolling through Yellowstone Park? Why dig them up when you could have a live one?
Evidently, re-creating extinct animals in a test tube isn’t that easy. Because geneticists don’t have cells complete with the nucleus to work with, they would be obliged to splice mammoth or mastodon cells with those of an Asian elephant. The clone, if any, would be different from the original. Cloned animals fre- quently have deformities and numerous health problems. Not to mention, a de-extinction mastodon would not be adapted to our warmer climate. Its diet would be different and, at least initially, they would have to be raised in captiv- ity. As philosopher Heather Browning wrote in her 2019 article, “Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Mammoths?”: “The first woolly mammoths would be some of the loneliest crea- tures imaginable.”