7-Foot Long Woolly Mammoth Tusk Examined via a New Clinical CT Scanner; What Did the Researchers Discover?

A seven-foot-long woolly mammoth tusk was imaged by a research team using a large-gantry CT scanner. Using a more recent clinical CT scanner, researchers could perform a complete scan of the tusk entirely.

The new technique eliminates the need for several partial scans and enables large-scale imaging.

Researchers published their study on Aug. 9 in Radiology.

What's Inside a Woolly Mammoth Tusk

Tilo Niemann, M.D., head of CT, cardiac, and thoracic radiology at Kantonsspital Baden in Switzerland, noted that working with rare fossils is challenging since it's imperative not to damage or destroy the specimen, as reported by ScienceDaily.

Even though there are several imaging techniques to evaluate the internal structure, scanning a complete tusk was not conceivable without fragmenting it or, at the absolute least, necessitating numerous scans that had to be painstakingly combined.

On more current CT scanners, the ring or cylinder that a patient, or in this example, the tusk, is positioned into has greater gantries.

The tusk that the researchers examined was discovered by the heritage and archaeological office of Canton Zug in central Switzerland.

The overall length of the tusk is 206 cm or about 7 feet. Its base is 16 cm, or slightly over 6 inches, in diameter. The object's entire diameter is 80 cm, or little more than 2.5 ft, when the helical, or spiral, the curvature is considered.

The two primary forms of material that make up tusks are cementum, which resembles bone, and dentin, which sits beneath the cementum and accounts for the majority of the tusk's bulk.

TOPSHOT-KENYA-WILDLIFE-CONSERVATION-IVORY-BURN — TOPSHOT - A Kenya Wildlife Services (KWS) officer stands near a burning pile of 15 tonnes of elephant ivory seized in kenya at Nairobi National Park on March 3, 2015. 15 tonnes is the largest amount of contraband ivory burned in Africa to date. The pile was offically burned by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta to mark World Wildlife Day and African Environment day. An average of 30,000 elephants are poached every year in Africa. CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images

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The most recent formation of the cone at the base of the tusk occurred right before the mammoth perished.

The tip of a mammoth's tusk is formed by the first cone it generates. Throughout the mammoth's existence, the intermediate cones grow.

Woolly Mammoth Tusk's Role as Toolmaker

A stone-age toolmaker crafted a fascinating device from a mammoth tusk 40,000 years ago.

The 20-centimeter-long ivory strip contains four predrilled holes laced with meticulously carved spiral incisions.

According to The Guardian, this strange device's purpose was unknown when it was discovered in the Hohle Fels cave in southwest Germany some years ago.

It would have been groundbreaking, but academics now think it's the earliest known way of producing rope.

The resultant ropes might have been used to make fishing nets, clothes, food jars, bows and arrows, snares and traps, and more.

Spear tips may be attached to poles, and ropes might be used to pull heavy objects like sleds.

Around 60,000 years ago, some of the first Homo sapiens to leave Africa and reach Europe evolved.

The sophistication of their artwork reveals how evolved our predecessors had grown.

Veerle Rots, an expert in Paleolithic materials at the University of Liege in Belgium, made rope out of four separate twisted strands of raw plant fiber by feeding them through the holes in a bronze reproduction of an ivory instrument.