[HN Gopher] Testosterone in tusks: Hormones in mammoth fossils e... ___________________________________________________________________ Testosterone in tusks: Hormones in mammoth fossils excite paleontologists Author : LinuxBender Score : 19 points Date : 2023-05-03 19:18 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com) (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com) | nkozyra wrote: | I can't tell if it's just late in the day or if that's a really | poorly written article across the board. | | > Remarkably, this is the first time hormones have been seen in | the extant or the extinct. | | Later in the article they say they identified testosterone in | modern elephants. Was this done _in response_ to finding it in | mammoths? It's the only way the first part of this article makes | sense. | | > Given their close relation to Asian elephants, is it surprising | that musth has been discovered? | | Huh? This is the first mention of Asian elephants in this | article. Have they had hormonal markers found in their tusks? If | so, back to question #1. | | > By contrast, they couldn't test for female hormones to test | "for pregnancy, for instance," because they didn't have a modern | female elephant tusk to compare. | | This is confusing. Is it because they're looking at Asian | elephants (where the females do not have tusks) or because ... | other reasons? | | I realize this is a freelance article, but ... yikes. | pengaru wrote: | Does this mean all those Chinese buyers of poached rhinoceros | horns for supposed virility are actually getting something if | there's testosterone in there? | LinuxBender wrote: | Probably not unless it was an incredibly high dose due to bio- | availability [1] assuming you meant by eating it. There are | ways to by-pass the first pass effect [2]. | | [1] - | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacokinetics_of_testostero... | | [2] - | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmacokinetics_of_testostero... | ftxbro wrote: | Rhino horns are modified hair and mammoth tusks are modified | teeth so they are very different. But maybe there can be some | testosterone in the rhino horns idk. | | EDIT: It seems you are right, there is some testosterone in | hair (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s002160050330) | so probably there can be some amount in rhino horns. I don't | know if eating it would have medical effects, for example maybe | there's not enough or maybe it's not in the right form or maybe | eating it doesn't work. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-03 23:00 UTC)