The mouth of a wolf skull, teeth-side up, measured by handheld calipers.

Be Brief: Relics

Bones, teeth, skulls, vertebral columns and more–relics are clues to mammal health on Isle Royale.

Not spooky or scary but incredibly informative. Skeletal remains have been collected annually—for more than four decades—by Michigan Technological University researchers.

From the Latin word relinquere: to leave behind; a synonym of "remains", a relic is matter with staying power, spared from decay. They are the breadcrumbs moose and wolves leave behind for researchers in Isle Royale National Park’s backwoods.

According to John Vucetich, professor of forest resources and environmental science, “These relics of life have lots of information.” Which is why skeletal remains from the island are studied so carefully. Vucetich and teammates have collected samples from more than 5,000 different moose, resulting in the largest collection of moose bones in the world, stored on Michigan Tech’s campus.

John Vucetich holds a caliber and a wolf mandible. A wolf skull sits on a rock in the left foreground.
Make no bones about it: Professor John Vucetich reads bones for clues.

“These bones–these relics of life–have been valuable for reasons not imagined to the researchers who first began collecting them,” Vucetich says. In one study, on the extremely subtle deformities of vertebrae of several dozen wolves born over that past five decades, he admits “the evidence had literally been beneath our noses, or sitting on the shelves, and it wasn't appreciated until after a long time.” With the help of expert analysts it was detected that the backbone deformities indicated wolf inbreeding. “It had previously been assumed that the wolves hadn't been inbred because nobody could find evidence,” he says.

The stories moose bones tell are no less provocative. Vucetich and teammates traced concentrations of mercury in moose teeth, work with implications on the effectiveness of clean air and water acts, Vucetich says.

"There's reason to think that teeth are what make us special as mammals and teeth are also our undoing: when our teeth go, so do the rest of our bodies soon afterward."John Vucetich

Going further, he shares, “moose may wear out their teeth faster if they had a poor start in life–if their first-year of life was malnourished. The results could have implications for human health, because we're talking about processes that are basic and common to mammals.” Breathtaking but not scary, life relics keep Vucetich guessing and learning.

Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.

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