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 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 scannin