Dental School Histologist Discusses His Role with "Baby Mammoth Project"

Ann Arbor, MI - May 12, 2009 - "It's definitely the coolest thing I’ve done because the tooth I looked at was 40,000 years old," said Christopher Strayhorn as he talked about his role in "The Baby Mammoth Project" that was recently featured on the National Geographic Channel and is the cover story in the May issue of National Geographic magazine.

Strayhorn, a histologist at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry in the Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine, analyzed portions of the creature's molars, small intestine, and other tissues at the request of U-M paleontologist Dr. Daniel Fisher. The baby mammoth, known as Lyuba, was discovered on a riverbank in northwest Siberia about two years ago. The discovery excited Fisher, whose research was funded by National Geographic, because of what he described as "the quality and completeness of her preservation. No other specimen preserves this much of the original anatomy."

As a histologist, Strayhorn said after he received tissue specimens from Fisher, he cut small sections of the specimens and stained them to make cellular features more apparent. "Usually I’m doing this same work on rodent teeth and bones, but this was unlike anything I’ve done in the 17 years I have been here," he said. "A couple of years ago, I examined the tusks of a mammoth that was about 10,000 years old. But now I was looking at teeth more than four times that old."

Strayhorn said of the nearly one dozen tissues he examined, "the teeth were, by far, the most exciting specimens to look at. Since we examine a lot of teeth, we know that they don't change over time, even though surrounding tissues do," he said. Stayhorn added that as he examined another tissue sample, an intestine, he discovered a blade of grass that was also the same age.

Excited to see his work mentioned on television, Strayhorn said one of his children went to bed after watching only 30 minutes of the two-hour program. "He said, 'Dad, I don’t think they're going to show you or your work' and then went to bed," Strayhorn said with a laugh. "But I watched the program to the very end and saw my work appeared in the final five minutes. I was pleased because when the film crew from National Geographic was here last fall, they spent hours filming in different settings to get that short segment of video that they used."

You can read more about Lyuba, the baby mammoth, and role of U-M paleontologist Daniel Fisher at Baby Mammoth Studies Validate U-M Researcher’s Techniques.