科學家解開猛獁象化石絕大多數爲雄性遺骨的奧祕

Woolly mammoths once ruled the northern reaches of our planet--roaming from Portugal to Siberia, and beyond to Alaska, Canada and the American midwest.

渾身披着長毛的猛獁象曾經統治着地球上的北部地區--出沒區域從葡萄牙到西班牙，再到阿拉斯加，加拿大以及美國的中西部。

And the massive beasts left lots of fossil evidence of their occupation.

這一巨大的野獸爲他們曾經佔領的區域留下了許多化石依據。

But now scientists have noticed a strange trend among those mammoth remains.

不過現在科學家們在那些猛獁象的遺骸中留意到了一個奇怪的趨勢。

The researchers genetically analyzed the fossilized bones, teeth and tusks of 98 individual Siberian mammoths. And they found that 70 percent of the mammoths were males.

研究人員用基因測試的方式對98具西伯利亞猛獁象遺骸的化石骨頭、牙齒以及象牙進行了分析研究。他們發現70%的猛獁象是雄性的。

"So essentially we think this is driven by two different things." Love Dalén, a paleogeneticist and professor at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm. "In general, in wild animals, males tend to be more risk-taking."

斯特哥爾摩的瑞典自然歷史博物館古遺傳學家及教授勒夫·達連表示：“因此，本質上來說，我們認爲這是由兩個因素造成的。一般來說，在野生動物裏面，雄性顯得更加冒險。”

The second thing, if modern elephant culture is any indication, is that male mammoths may have been solitary loners.

如果以現代象的生活習性作爲參照的話，第二個因素就是，雄性猛獁象可能已是獨棲的動物。

More likely to crash through thin ice and sinkholes, or get caught in a mudslide than females. These types of death are more likely to become preserved—so those are the remains that we find. The study is in the journal Current Biology.

比起那些母象，雄象更有可能壓碎薄薄的冰層和岩溶層，或者陷進淤泥堆裏面。這種死亡方式更有可能被保存下來，因此，那些就是我們所發現的遺體。這項研究被刊登在《當代生物學》的期刊上。