For 70 years, they were believed to be mammoths… but no, they were whales. Two “megafauna” vertebrae in Alaska have been relabeled, and history is changing in 2026
For more than 70 years, two heavy fossil vertebrae in a museum drawer in interior Alaska were proudly labeled as woolly mammoth. New tests now show they belong to whales instead, forcing scientists to rethink a small but eye-catching piece of the mammoth extinction story.
The bones were collected in the 1950s near Dome Creek, north of Fairbanks, roughly 400 kilometers, or about 250 miles, from the nearest coastline.
Learning that these fossils came from ocean animals has raised a basic question that would puzzle any road trip planner looking at a map of Alaska today; how did whale bones end up so far inland?
From field discovery to museum drawer
In the early 1950s, naturalist Otto Geist found the vertebrae while working in gold mines near Dome Creek and sent them to the University of Alaska Museum of the North. Curators cataloged the round bone disks as mammoth remains, based on their appearance and the well-known presence of Ice Age giants in the region.
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For decades, the fossils rested out of sight in collection drawers while visitors focused on full skeletons and tusks under bright gallery lights. It is the kind of small label most museum goers accept without a second thought as they stroll past the glass cases.
Radiocarbon dates that broke the mammoth timeline
That quiet routine changed when the Adopt a Mammoth project invited members of the public to sponsor radiocarbon dating of stored specimens, including these two vertebrae. When a team led by Matthew Wooller at University of Alaska Fairbanks checked the results, the dates came back between roughly 1,900 and 2,700 years old.
Those numbers created a serious mismatch, since woolly mammoths on mainland Alaska are thought to have disappeared around 13,000 years ago. If the dates had truly belonged to mammoths, the bones would have represented the youngest known fossils of the species in this part of the world by many thousands of years.
At first, researchers considered the possibility of a technical error in the dating process. The more they studied the data, though, the more it looked as if “something was amiss” with the old mammoth label rather than with the lab work itself.
Illustration of a woolly mammoth skeleton, the extinct Ice Age giant whose fossils were long studied across Alaska and the Arctic.
Isotopes and DNA reveal two ancient whales
The team then measured stable isotopes of nitrogen and carbon in the bone material to see what kind of food the animals once ate. The chemical pattern matched marine food webs rather than the grasses and shrubs a grazing mammoth would have relied on, a red flag that pointed toward the ocean.
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That clue pushed the scientists to extract fragments of ancient DNA from the fossils. Genetic tests showed that one vertebra came from a common minke whale and the other from a North Pacific right whale, both large whales that normally spend their lives in saltwater.
Knowing the bones came from whales also meant the radiocarbon ages needed a correction, since ocean animals can appear older on paper because of the way carbon cycles through seawater. After adjusting for this marine effect, the team estimates that the whales lived roughly 1,100 and 1,800 years ago, long after mammoths had vanished from the mainland.
A whale mystery in the middle of Alaska
One puzzle remains, and it is the part that keeps the story from feeling too tidy. Dome Creek sits about 400 kilometers from the coast on a small stream that today could barely float a fishing raft, which makes the idea of a whale swimming there hard to picture.
The study outlines several possibilities, including whales that traveled far inland along major rivers and died there, or bones that ancient people carried from the shore to use as tools or building material. The authors point out that both ideas have practical limits, especially for a massive right whale that feeds on plankton not found in rivers.
For the most part, the simplest explanation may be a human one rather than a natural one, a basic cataloging mistake when the fossils entered the collection, since Geist gathered bones from both inland and coastal sites and the wrong box may have been marked with the Fairbanks location.
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In everyday terms, it is a reminder that even expert labels can age badly and that revisiting old collections with new tools can flip a neat story on its head.
The official study has been published in the Journal of Quaternary Science.
Last month, Alaska Attorney General Stephen J. Cox announced that his office entered into a settlement with a group of Swickard car dealerships, resolving false advertising allegations against the dealers. As part of the settlement, the dealers agree to pay a civil penalty of $800,000.
The Alaska AG alleged that the dealers engaged in bait and switch advertising by promoting vehicles that were not actually available for purchase in order to draw customers to its lots. The AG also alleged that the dealers refused to honor advertised prices, requiring customers to purchase expensive dealer add-ons.
In announcing the settlement, Cox said, “Car dealers don’t get to advertise one price and charge another—or advertise cars that aren’t really there. That’s a bait-and-switch, and it’s unlawful. Alaskans already face higher costs than most—this settlement holds Swickard accountable and reinforces that the price you see should be the price you pay.”
Interestingly, the consent decree includes a provision that says that if the dealers engage “in a reckless violation or persistent violations” of Alaska’s consumer protection laws in the future, the court may impose an additional penalty of up to $200,000.
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This enforcement action is yet another example of the heightened scrutiny that car dealer advertising is under right now. Earlier this month, the Federal Trade Commission settled a similar action. And, in March, the FTC sent warning letters to nearly 100 car dealers.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Palmer’s Colony High School Northern Knights Robotics won the First Robotics Competition (FRC) regional championship on April 4, becoming the first team from Alaska to win the title.
The Northern Knights’ business manager, sophomore Carter Fickes, said that the FRC is one of the most prestigious robotics competitions in the world.
“The game elements are a lot bigger,” he said.
“There’s a lot of more coding challenges as well, because you have what is called an autonomous period where your robot’s running strictly on code, and then you have a teleop period where it’s driver controlled.”
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According to Fickes, the regional competition in Minneapolis saw the team paired with and against groups from Minnesota, Illinois, the Czech Republic, Japan, and China.
Teams were required to make “alliances” with each other, before competing together in the quarterfinals.
“Being collaborative with other teams and being open to their strategy is great.” he said.
“We were telling them our main marketing strategy was ‘we’re flexible, and if you want us to do something, we can do it.’”
Fickes told Alaska’s News Source that the competition required teams to program and direct their robots to shoot balls towards targets in order to score points.
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The Northern Knights programmed their 85-pound robot to focus on defense, blocking shots from the opposing team.
“Our alliance partners had semi-automatic turrets that could shoot like hundreds of balls in a minute,” he said.
“We were blocking the other robots from getting on the other side and scoring fuel.”
Fickes said this was the first year that their team was selected to be a part of an alliance.
After the quarterfinals, the Northern Knights went on to dominate the rest of the competition.
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“We were untouched,” he said.
“We were outscoring them by 200 points, and then the finals matches, I think it ended up being like 400 to 200 or 300.”
By winning both the finals match, as well as the Rookie Team of the Year award, the Northern Knights earned themselves a ticket to the FRC Worlds Competition in Texas beginning on April 29.
“Our mentality is kind of like, ‘we’ve made it this far, so why not try our best?’” he said.
“If we don’t win the whole competition, it’s not the end of the world. A team from Alaska has never done this before, and if we like our goal is to win and to qualify and do good.”
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Unlike many other robotics teams across the country, Ficker said the Northern Knights are entirely funded through private donations.
“We built our robot in our team captain’s basement. He let us use his house, and we spent hours upon hours upon hours in his basement building and testing.”
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A U.S. Senate race in Alaska is turning into one of the most expensive in the state’s history as a Democrat tries to flip a seat held by two-term incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan.
The fundraising bonanza comes as the odds of Democrats taking control of the Senate in this year’s midterm elections appear to be improving, according to political analysts.
Democrat Mary Peltola, who held Alaska’s sole House seat from 2022 to 2025, raised almost $9 million in the first quarter of 2026, Politico reported. It’s the largest first-quarter stockpile in Alaska political history, according to her campaign.
“I’m so grateful for the support we’ve received from every single borough and census area across our state, and it’s that support that will bring us to victory this November,” Peltola said.
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GOP incumbent also has millions
Sullivan, who’s seeking a third term, brought in $2.1 million in the first quarter and has $7.5 million of cash on hand, Politico reported.
“This historic support sends a clear message: Alaskans know that Dan delivers,” Sullivan campaign spokesperson Nate Adams said in a statement.
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In 2020, Democrat Al Gross outspent Sullivan but still lost by 13 points.
Alaska is a heavily Republican state. President Donald Trump carried the state by 10 to 15 points in each of the last three elections.
However, Democrats are optimistic about a recent poll from Alaska Survey Research. The survey showed Peltola with a positive rating of 48.5%, compared to Sullivan’s 40.7%.
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Dozens of US Senate seats in play
Thirty-five U.S. Senate seats are up for grabs in November, with Republicans defending 22 and Democrats, 13.
With the GOP holding a current majority of 53-47, Democrats need to flip four seats to take control of the upper chamber for the remaining two years of Trump’s second term.
The Cook Political Report reported Monday that “the Senate battlefield is shifting in Democrats’ favor.” However, securing the magic number of 51 is still a “tall order.”
Cook rates the Peltola-Sullivan race as “leans Republican.” Eighteen other races are currently rated as either “likely Republican” or “solid Republican.”
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The nonpartisan newsletter shows three races in the “leans Democrat” category. One other is “likely Democrat,” and nine are listed as “solid Democrat.”
With Election Day more than six months away, three races — in Maine, Michigan and Ohio — are listed as toss-ups.
National Democrats see Peltola as a key to winning a majority in the Senate.
Politico said super PACs supporting Democrats have already spent more than $3 million in ad buys in Alaska, while the Republican’s Senate Leadership Fund has indicated it intends to spend $15 million on the race for Sullivan.
