At the Explorers Club ’s 47thAnnual Dinner in 1951 , attendees gather in the grand ballroom of New York City ’s Roosevelt Hotel and dined on an array of sumptuous food for thought . harmonise to myth , one of the delicacies was a hunk of woolly mammoth meat preserve by a glacier ( actuallylabeled on the menuasMegatherium , an extinct giant footing tree sloth , but frequently reported as mammoth ) . Now , Yale investigator have debunked the legend by do a DNA analytic thinking on dinner remnant pull through as a souvenir . Their conclusion ? The meat was actually green sea polo-neck .
“ I ’m sure people wanted to believe it . They had no idea that many years later a Ph.D. student would amount along and calculate this out with deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing techniques,”said Jessica Glass , a Yale graduate studentwhoco - author a study on the meat . It was bring out in the first place this week in the journalPLOS ONE .
By all accounts , the Explorers Club dinnerwas a gourmet affaire . Its computer menu vaunt Pacific wanderer crab with legs enceinte enough to tip 10 people to each one , as well as bison steaks , among other offerings .
The spread ’s mischievous booster , Commander Wendell Phillips Dodge , had beam out press notices prior to the event that the dinner party would include “ prehistorical meat . " From there , rumour pass around . Some believed that stand for woolly gigantic meat , while others think ofMegatherium — the elephantine ground sloth . ( Also on the menu ? Green turtle soup . )
Explorers Club appendage Paul Griswold Howes of the Bruce Museum in Greenwich , Connecticut , was unable to attend the dinner , but that did n’t turn back him from stake a claim on the buzzed - about menu item . He place arequest :
The golf club follow , and Howes ’s relic sat preserve in a jar as the woolly mammoth myth remain .
In 2001 , Howes ’s clenched fist - size clump of meat was sum up to the mammal collection at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History . There , it caught the oculus of two curious graduate students : Glass and Matt Davis , who pick up a Ulysses S. Grant from the Explorers Club to perform aDNA analysis . Their findings revealed that the meat was n’t ancient , nor rarefied ; it was simply a glob of turtle that was likely fished from the dinner party ’s soup trend . Dodge even sort of admitted to the strategy , by and by writing in the club’sExplorer ’s Journalthat he had found a way to change turtle into gargantuan sloth .
Now that the mystery story has been solved , who know — mayhap the Explorers Club will serve the storied specimen at theirupcoming 112th Annual Dinnerto bring their decades - long publicity stunt full - circle .
Video courtesy ofYale University ; images good manners of iStock .
[ h / tAssociated Press ]
