For 70 years, a set of bones stored at the University of Alaska’s Museum of the North was believed to be from a woolly mammoth. The fossils were discovered in the 1950s by archaeologist Otto Geist about 10 miles north of Fairbanks in a region once known as Beringia, a well-known source of Late Pleistocene megafauna fossils. Based on size and location, the bones were assumed to be mammoth remains and were cataloged as such.

Recent analysis, however, revealed a major error. Radiocarbon dating showed the bones were only 2,000 to 3,000 years old — far too recent to belong to mammoths, which largely went extinct around 10,000 years ago. Further, carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis suggested a marine diet, inconsistent with a land-dwelling mammoth. DNA testing confirmed the bones belonged not to a mammoth, but to two whale species: a minke whale and a North Pacific right whale.

The discovery raises questions about how whale bones ended up so far inland. Some theories suggest scavengers or Indigenous peoples transported them, but the most accepted explanation is that the location was misrecorded — Geist may have found them closer to the coast. Regardless, the corrected identification adds two genetically documented ancient whale specimens to scientific records, potentially aiding future cetacean research.