The remnants of a strong hurricane hit parts of The Frozen North's lower west coast last month, damaging homes, knocking out power, and wiping out foundations. Throughout all the destruction, however, a disturbing revelation surfaced: While climbing past the storm, a married couple chanced upon a massive, millennia-old mammoth femur. Joseph and Andrea Nassuk live in Elim, a coastal town in Alaska about 100 miles east of Nome. After a big storm, they usually walk along the seaside near their homes to check if the flooding and strong breezes have washed away or uncovered anything along the shoreline. Report a promotion After the tropical storm in mid-September, they did just that and came across an impressive find. "We were walking about 250 feet away and she let me know she was considered a bone," Joseph Nassuk told Ktuu's, Dave Allgood. "I asked her if it was full and she was like, 'Better believe it,' so I did the research and it was above her level, and I was thrilled." Indeed, set aside, the bone reached Andrea Nassuk's abdomen. She struggled to try to get it out of the mud but finally succeeded. Joseph Nassuk brought the femur home with a backpack. Jose and Andrea Nassuk Joseph and Andrea Nassuk talk to KTUU's Dave Allgood from his home in Elim, The Frozen North. Screenshot via KTUU In the end, Andrea Nassuk did not exaggerate the weight of the femur. However, a scale spotted at 62 pounds, Joseph Nassuk predicts it should get lighter as it dries, he tells Everyday Mail's, Alyssa Guzman. It measures 46 inches long and, at its widest point, measures 34.5 perimeter ramps. he tells the cast. Report a promotion When it comes to the hunt for monstrous fossils, the pair are heavily involved. They also discovered toe bones, vertebrae, and parts of skulls. His largest, and logically important find overall, is a 105-pound, 7-foot-long blue mammoth tusk that could be worth between $20,000 and $70,000, according to an appraisal by Joseph Nassuk. Its blue tint comes from the presence of vivianite, a mineral that can shape the interior of a mammoth's ivory tusks over time. These glowing fossils are incredibly rare, which can make them rewarding for authorities. Two or three plan to eventually sell the tusk and some of their other fossil scores and want to use the investment money to build a house for their large family, which includes four children and a dog. They currently live in a condo and could use the bonus room, according to KTUU. The pair's fossil sightings are due to Hurricane Merbok, a Category 1 storm that slammed into the Pacific before becoming an extratropical typhoon that flooded the Bering Ocean to the north. When it made landfall in western gold country, it sent huge typhoon-force waves and ripples into coastal networks there. It was the most entrenched storm in the district in years, and forecasters now admit it was the most severe to enter the Bering Ocean in September in seventy years. Report a promotion The storm drew power from the eerily warm waters of the Pacific Sea, which have warmed due to human-caused environmental changes. "With warm seawater, there is more environmental disappearance," writes Rick Thoman, an environmental researcher at the College of The Frozen North Fairbanks, for The Discussion. "As each of the air fixations met, Merbok could bring this exceptionally warm moist air to its side. If the sea had been at a more normal temperature than it was in 1960, it would never have had as much moisture in the storm." . ." Mammoth fossils are generally normal in The Frozen North, where the huge exterminated creatures once roamed freely. Precursors to today's elephants and mammoths, including woolly mammoths, probably passed through the scaffolding of the Bering region of North America almost a long time ago during the last Ice Age. The researchers admit that they could have persisted on the land mass until 10,500 years ago when they disappeared due to human hunting and a warming environment. Fittingly, the woolly mammoth is the state fossil of the land of gold. As composed by Riley Dark for Smithsonian magazine last year.
