Even mammoths, like modern elephants, were prey to hormonal storms in the mating season, assuming aggressive behavior against rivals due to testosterone peaks: this is demonstrated by the hormonal fluctuations recorded in the tusks of a male woolly mammoth, found in Siberia and lived about 35,000 years ago. The results of the analyzes are published in the journal Nature by an international group of experts coordinated by the University of Michigan.
High levels of testosterone in mating season had already been documented in modern elephants through blood and urine tests, leading to speculation that their now-extinct ancestors could also become aggressive as a result of similar hormonal changes. Various clues seemed to support this, such as the identification of skeletal fractures from fighting, but so far there has been no direct evidence.
The researchers found it in the dentin layers of the right tusk of a male woolly mammoth who lived about 55 years. By retrofitting an analysis technique already used to detect steroid hormones in the saliva and blood of humans, the researchers found that the adult mammoth had testosterone peaks 10 times higher than baseline levels. Similar but much more marked variations were found by analyzing the tusk of an African elephant that died in Botswana in 1963: its dentin revealed peaks 20 times higher than the baseline level, perhaps because it was less degraded over time. For comparison, the analyzes were also conducted on a female mammoth also found in Siberia: the levels of testosterone (as well as those of progesterone and androstenedione) were lower than those of the male mammoth and elephant, with minimal variations.
The study thus demonstrates that traces of hormones detectable in dentin may provide a new approach for studying the reproductive ecology, population dynamics and behavior of modern and ancient animals.
Source: Ansa
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