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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, 2020
Top Stories
Gerardo Carrillo
MEXICOCITY (AP)—Thenumberofmammothskeletons
recoveredat anairport construction sitenorthofMexico
City has risen to at least 200, with a large number still
to be excavated, experts said on Thursday.
Archaeologists hope the site that has become
“mammoth central”— the shores of an ancient lakebed
that bothattractedand trappedmammoths in itsmarshy
soil — may help solve the riddle of their extinction.
Experts said that inds are still being made at the
site, including signs that humansmay havemade tools
from the bones of the lumbering animals that died
somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.
There are somanymammoths at the site of the new
Santa Lucia airport that observers have to accompany
each bulldozer that digs into the soil tomake surework
is halted when mammoth bones are uncovered.
“We have about 200mammoths, about 25 camels,
ive horses,” said archaeologist Rubén Manzanilla
López of the National Institute of Anthropology and
History, referring to animals that went extinct in the
Americas. The site is only about 20 kilometres from
arti icial pits, essentially shallowmammoth traps, that
were dug by early inhabitants to trap and kill dozens
of mammoths.
Manzanilla López said evidence is beginning
to emerge that suggests even if the mammoths
at the airport possibly died natural deaths after
becoming stuck in the mud of the ancient lake bed,
their remains may have been carved up by humans,
somewhat like those found at the mammoth-trap
site in the hamlet of San Antonio Xahuento, in the
nearby township of Tultepec.
While tests are still being carried out on the
mammoth bones to try to ind possible butchering
marks, archaeologists have founddozens ofmammoth-
bone tools—usually shafts used to hold tools or cutting
implements — like the ones in Tultepec.
“Here we have found evidence that we have the
same kind of tools, but until we can do the laboratory
studies to see marks of these tools or possible tools,
we can’t say we have evidence that is well-founded,”
Manzanilla López said.
Paleontologist Joaquin Arroyo Cabrales said the
airport site “will be a very important one to test
hypotheses” about the mass extinction of mammoths.
“What caused these animals extinction,
everywhere there is a debate, whether it was climate
change or the presence of humans,” Arroyo Cabrales
said. “I think in the end the decision will be that there
was a synergy effect between climate change and
human presence.”
Julhas Alam
DHAKA, BANGLADESH (AP) — When
Bangladeshi authorities prepared
to enforce a nationwide lockdown
in late March, three friends fretted:
How would rickshaw drivers, factory
workers and other working poor
people survive?
With only BDT20,000 (USD236) in
hand, their challenge was to channel
resources from the generous haves to
the desperate have-nots. They started
making appeals for money.
The irst response came from
BangladeshicricketstarShakibAlHasan
whodonatedBDT2million(USD24,000).
With that, they began distributing
food packs in the impoverished
neighbourhoods in Dhaka.
Eventually, they succeeded in
bringing about 120 organisations and
business houses under one umbrella
for their aid campaign, Mission Save
Bangladesh. Their work has since
expanded to helping families ighting
cancer and to arranging supplies of
masks and sanitisers.
“People are so generous! They
responded to our calls from their
hearts,” said Imran Kadir, who founded
thecampaignwith friends TajdinHasan
and Imtiaz Halim. Kadir spoke with
The Associated Press
as he and other
volunteers visited a cancer hospital in
Dhaka to distribute food packs.
“Westarteddistributingfoodpacks
in impoverished neighbourhoods in
Dhaka with the initial funds that
came from the Shakib Al Hasan,” said
Kadir, 32. “Slowly we expanded our
reach outside the capital city.”
Bangladesh’s leading exporter,
the garment industry, has been hit
hard by the pandemic, and so have
its four million low-paid workers. The
industry reports that orders worth
more than USD3 billion have been
cancelled or suspended.
The Bangladeshi development
agency BRAC said the incomes of
about 51 per cent of the country’s
rickshawdrivers, 58per cent of factory
workers, 66 per cent of hotel and
restaurant workers and 62 per cent
of day labourers in non-agricultural
sectors have been reduced to zero
since the lockdown began.
Businesses have reopened but the
recovery would take time.
Many companies channelled
money from their corporate social
responsibility funds to Mission Save
Bangladesh. “Till now we have raised
about USD230,000. This is very
inspiring,” Kadir said.
The group provided food packs to
about 13,000 families and another
60,000 individuals. It provided
an ambulance to a group to help
families cremate or bury people who
died of coronavirus.
In a cancer hospital in Dhaka,
volunteers brought food packages
for two weeks for the patients, most
of whom came from villages.
AbdullahBiswas, a father of acancer
patient, was happy to get food packs.
“We are in serious inancial
crisis. This aid will help us a lot,”
Biswas said.
‘Mammoth central’
found at Mexico airport
construction site
A paleontologist at the California-based Cogstone
Resource Management company Ashley Leger, who
was not involved in the dig, noted that such natural
death groupings “are rare. A very speci ic set of
conditions that allow for a collection of remains in
an area but also be preserved as fossils must be met.
There needs to be a means for them to be buried
rapidly and experience low oxygen levels”.
The site near Mexico City now appears to have
outstripped the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs South
Dakota — which has about 61 sets of remains — as
the world’s largest ind of mammoth bones. Large
concentrations have also been found in Siberia and
at Los Angeles’ La Brea tar pits.
For now, the mammoths seem to be everywhere
at the site and the inds may slow down, but not stop,
work on the new airport.
MexicanArmyCaptain JesusCantoral, whooversees
efforts topreserve remains at the army-ledconstruction
site, said “a large number of excavation sites” are still
pending detailed study, and that observers have to
accompany backhoes and bulldozers every time they
break ground at a new spot.
The project is so huge, he noted, that themachines
can just gowork somewhere else while archaeologists
study an area.
The airport project is scheduled for completion in
2022, at which point the dig will end.
Paleontologists work to preserve the skeleton of a mammoth that was discovered at the construction site of
Mexico City’s new airport in the Santa Lucia military base, Mexico
Ruben Manzanilla Lopez of the National Anthropology
Institute shows the skeleton of a mammoth that was
discovered in the construction site. PHOTOS: AP
Friends bring businesses to
aid needy Bangladeshi people