2 comments TOOLIK FIELD STATION, ALASKA– Last week, we encountered a herd of musk oxen rambling on the tundra. The herd was adjacent to the Dalton Highway, or the Haul Road, north of Toolik Lake.
Watch this video to learn how these oxen’s ancestors immigrated through Ellis Island.
Amy Breen has studied the impacts of climate change on Arctic plant communities for nearly a decade. She is a PhD candidate in the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska, and a member of a team of circumpolar scientists participating in the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX). In July 2008, she’ll begin blogging from the Toolik Field Station, her field site in the northern foothills of the Brooks Range in Alaska.
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Hi Amy,
I am quite impressed with your knowledge of how the Musk Ox was transported all the way from Greenland to Alaska! Do you know exactly how long the trip took? Also impressed with their hardiness to have withstood the trip and the many modes of transportation.
Thanks for all that you do to enlighted the multitude.
Mom/Rosie
Dear Rosie,
The musk oxen began their journey from Greenland to Alaska in the summer of 1930. They arrived in Fairbanks in November of that year. Shortly after, the ice age mammals were transported to Nunivak Island in the Bering Sea.
I adapted the story of their journey from an article by Ned Rozell, a science writer at the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute. To read more, see: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF17/1758.html
Thanks for your interest, Mom!
Amy