Frozen baby woolly mammoth discovered in Yukon gold fields | Hacker News Reader

Frozen baby woolly mammoth discovered in Yukon gold fields

cbc.ca

103 pointsworldvoyageur22 comments

Discussion yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31877772

I take it these are fields where precious metals are sought, as opposed to potatoes. I suppose you don't grow potatoes in frozen ground, but that was my first reading of this.

(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yukon_Gold_potato)

That's what the article says yes.

Something I haven't seen mentioned but am curious about is whether this discovery was facilitated by global warming.

> a young miner working in Yukon's Eureka Creek, south of Dawson City, was digging up muck using a front end loader when he struck something.

Looking for things in the ground usually turns up things in the ground

So is this mammoth well preserved enough for us to Jurassic Park this species or is it the same story of DNA being too far decayed.

Somebody tell George Church.

Fossilized, not frozen.

Not a fossil, mummified and/or preserved by cold or ground conditions. That's actual tissue.

Wikipedia says

> A fossil is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age.

So tissue still qualifies. If someone says its not a fossil, that would presumably be because its not old enough (not a “past age”).

Also, I am pretty sure it wasn’t frozen when discovered since it was near the surface at a time when they were getting rain. Might have been in permafrost until they started excavating though.

https://www.thoughtco.com/fossilized-or-petrified-1438948#:~....

What's the difference between fossilized and petrified? It can be a little confusing. A fossil is any evidence of life that has been preserved in rock. Fossils include not just organisms themselves, but also the burrows, marks, and footprints they left behind. Fossilization is the name for a number of processes that produce fossils. One of those processes is mineral replacement. This is common in sedimentary and some metamorphic rocks, where a mineral grain may be replaced by a material with a different composition, but still preserving the original shape.

What Makes It Petrified?

When a fossil organism is subjected to mineral replacement, it is said to be petrified. For example, petrified wood may be replaced with chalcedony, or shells replaced with pyrite. This means that out of all fossils, only the creature itself could be fossilized by petrification.

And not all fossil organisms are petrified. Some are preserved as carbonized films, or preserved unchanged like recent fossil shells, or fixed in amber like fossil insects.

I feel like this is bordering a bit pendantic even if it's techincally correct. I think most laymen would understand fossilized as rock, hard material even if that's incorrect.

The article specifically says it is NOT fossilized

Mammoths aren't that old. The last one died apparently about 4000 years ago.

> A perfect storm of events has led to a once-in-a-lifetime discovery for a gold miner, a First Nation, a veteran paleontologist and a territory.

Saying 'a First Nation' like that is equivalent to saying 'a female' - which people also mistakenly say - or 'a British', which nobody would say.

'Canadian' happens to be both adjective and (proper) noun; that doesn't mean everything is, eh.

This use of "a First Nation" is meant to refer to the group of people, not an individual. I believe it's equivalent to saying in the US "a Native American tribe".

EDIT: see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Nations_in_Canada

> Some indigenous peoples in Canada have also adopted the term First Nation to replace the word "band" in the formal name of their community.

Then why 'a'? It still seems wrong to me, like (but opposite) 'woman police officer', it should surely be 'a First Nation people' or something?

To use your example, it sounds to me like 'a Native'. 'Native what?' I'm left wondering as a reader.

Perhaps I'm wrong, I'm not Canadian, nor 'a First Nation', it just doesn't scan to me.

"Nation" is already a collective noun. Canada is a nation. These people, as a group, are also a nation.

It parses a little ambiguous or odd to me but not wrong. It's the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in First Nation, one of many First Nations in Canada. The analogous word you might be reaching for would probably be tribe or band, and neither "a tribe" or "a band" read weird to me at all.

Within the Canadian legal framework, the treaties between Canada and its indigenous population are at least theoretically between distinct "nations".

A First Nation, a Nation, a Territory (which is in the sentence)

The sentence is structured a bit oddly but are you really proposing someone wouldn't say "A British veteran paleontologist"? It is not uncommon to mention someone's nationality alongside their profession when talking in an international context.

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