The extinction of woolly mammoths was driven by a combination of rapid climate change and human activities, with warming temperatures at the end of the Ice Age transforming their grassland habitats into forests and wetlands, reducing food availability and suitable living conditions for the species.

During the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene, the mammoth steppe, once rich in grasses and herbs, was overtaken by shrubs and mosses, a shift exacerbated by warming temperatures and the decline of large herbivores like mammoths that had maintained open landscapes.

Rapid climatic shifts, including increased rainfall and the formation of rivers and marshes, further diminished vegetation suitable for mammoths, outpacing their ability to adapt to the altered environment and leading to food scarcity.

Human hunting compounded these environmental pressures, as archaeological evidence from sites like Siberia’s Berelekh ‘mammoth graveyard’ indicates that early humans scavenged and hunted mammoths for meat, ivory, and tools over extended periods.

Stone Age tools, such as Clovis points and spears, enabled humans to hunt mammoths effectively, with remains found alongside artifacts suggesting organized hunting practices that further reduced mammoth populations.

The combined effects of habitat loss and human predation created isolated mammoth populations with reduced genetic diversity, making them less adaptable to environmental changes and hastening their extinction.

In isolated regions like Wrangel Island, mammoths persisted for thousands of years after their mainland counterparts went extinct, but their eventual disappearance was likely due to sudden environmental or ecological events rather than genetic factors.

The extinction of mammoths disrupted ecosystems, as their grazing and movement had maintained grasslands, stored carbon, and regulated methane levels, highlighting the long-term ecological consequences of their loss.

The extinction of woolly mammoths was driven by a combination of rapid climate change and human activities, with warming temperatures at the end of the Ice Age transforming their grassland habitats into forests and wetlands, reducing food availability and suitable living conditions for the species.

Title:

Content: Partners news
The cause of the extinction of mammoths
Scientists have found that mammoths died out due to climate change
Photo: Stanislav Krasilnikov / TASS
An international team of researchers found that the cause of the extinction of mammoths in Siberia was primarily a sharp climate change, not human activity.
The article is published in the journal Nature.
Woolly mammoths became extinct only about four thousand years ago.
They were not only the main source of meat of ancient people – the latter made from their bones the basis for dwellings, from their tusks made harpoons and even musical instruments.
Therefore, there is a widespread theory that the main cause of extinction was humans.
Researchers from the Institute of Earth Sciences of St. Petersburg State University together with colleagues from the UK, Denmark, China, Norway and the United States decided to restore the appearance of the tundrosteppe, which was inhabited by mammoths.
To do this, they using the shotgun method — obtaining from a random massive sample of cloned fragments of the original sequence — analyzed the DNA of ancient plants and animals collected from 535 different places in the Arctic, where the mammoth lived, over 20 years.
They also analyzed the DNA of more than 1,500 modern plants and animals.
Researchers were able to map the distribution of populations of mammoths and other representatives of the megafauna of the tundrosteppe.
They saw that over time their populations and genetic diversity became smaller and smaller — making survival increasingly difficult.
With the end of the Pleistocene about 12 thousand years ago and the accompanying retreat of glaciers and the formation of rivers, lakes and marshes, vegetation has decreased in volume, and it has become insufficient to maintain the previous level of populations.
As the climate warms, trees and swamp plants have taken the place of former mammoth pastures.
“We have shown that climate change, in particular rainfall, has directly led to changes in vegetation.
According to our models, people did not have any influence on them [mammoths], ” said the first author of the work, a researcher at the University of Cambridge Yuchen Wang.
However, the extinction of mammoths was influenced not only by the warming of the climate itself.
“His speed was the last nail in the lid of the coffin – they (megafauna tundrosteppe – approx.
“Tape.ru ”) could not adapt quickly enough, when the landscape radically changed and food was not enough, ” said the head of the scientific group, Professor of Copenhagen and Cambridge universities Eske Willerslev.
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According to most recent research, what is the primary cause of wooly mammoth extinction?

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
shrank grassland
pastures becoming swampy
food sources disappearing

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What aspects of climate change contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

During the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene, the mammoth steppe, once rich in grasses and herbs, was overtaken by shrubs and mosses, a shift exacerbated by warming temperatures and the decline of large herbivores like mammoths that had maintained open landscapes.

Title:

Content: DNA samples from permafrost showed that in Canada mammoths were still preserved 5000 years ago
In a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers from McMaster University, the University of Alberta, the American Museum of Natural History, and the government of the Canadian Yukon Territory presented DNA samples from 30,000 to 3,000 years ago obtained from permafrost cores in the Klondike region of central Yukon.
The method of DNA isolation and enrichment, created at McMaster University, was used in the work.
Having learned to extract DNA from soil extracted from permafrost, scientists opened a window into ancient life on the Yukon, the vast new information they received changed previous ideas about the dynamics of extinction of animals such as mammoths, mastodons, saber-toothed cats, wild horses and others.
Researchers have recreated in amazing detail the changing communities of animals and plants that existed during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene — an unstable climatic period 11,000 – 14,000 years ago, when a large number of large species disappeared.
During the early Holocene, which began about 11,000 years ago, the Yukon environment changed dramatically.
The formerly rich pastures - the "mammoth steppe" - were overgrown with shrubs and mosses, as this process was no longer held back by numerous herds of mammoths, horses and bison.
The work builds on previous research by McMaster scientists, who determined that woolly mammoths and North American horses were likely present on the Yukon around 9,700 years ago.
Since then, more advanced methods and further research have refined the previous analysis and brought the date closer to the modern period.
The analysis shows that mammoths and horses were already in sharp decline even before the onset of climate instability, but they did not disappear immediately due to excessive human hunting, as previously thought.
In fact, DNA evidence shows that both the woolly mammoth and the North American horse still existed as recently as 5,000 years ago.
“Now that we have these technologies, we understand how much information about the history of life is stored in permafrost, ” explains lead author Tyler Murchie of the Department of Anthropology at McMaster University. — The amount of genetic data in permafrost is quite large and really allows for a large-scale ecosystem and evolutionary reconstruction that has no analogues today. ”
The scientists also stress the need to collect and archive as many permafrost samples as possible that could be lost forever as the Arctic warms.
Another result of the study was a new look at the horse, which, as usual, appeared in North America only after contact with Europeans.
“Although mammoths are gone forever, horses are not, ” says Ross McPhee of the American Museum of Natural History. – The horse that lived on the Yukon 5,000 years ago is directly related to the modern horse species, Equus caballus.
From a biological point of view, this makes the horse an indigenous North American mammal, and it should be treated as such. "
Source: polit.ru

According to most recent research, what is the primary cause of wooly mammoth extinction?

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
shrank grassland
food sources disappearing

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What aspects of climate change contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Rapid climatic shifts, including increased rainfall and the formation of rivers and marshes, further diminished vegetation suitable for mammoths, outpacing their ability to adapt to the altered environment and leading to food scarcity.

Title:

Content: In one of the most common versions of the extinction of giant mamutes, it is claimed that this was caused by the hunting of ancient people.
Our ancestors literally ate most of the animals.
But recent studies say that this is not the case and people have become far from the main reason for the disappearance of mammoths.
Hunger caused by climate change is the real killer.
Searching for gold, but found mammoths: an incredible story with the Yukon
Drawing of a mammoth on the wall of the cave of Arcy-sur-Cure, France / Photo Wikipedia
The Hungry Death of Great Animals
It would seem that mammoths existed for millions of years and survived several ice ages.
That is, climate change did not affect them critically.
But as soon as they encountered humans, they began to die out.
Finally, we were able to prove that the problem was not only climate change, but also the speed of these changes.
This was the last nail in the coffin – the mammoths could not adapt quickly enough when the landscape changed dramatically and food became scarce.
- says the author of the study Eske Willerslev, a professor at the University of Cambridge and director of the Center for Geogenetics of the Lundbeck Foundation at the University of Copenhagen.
The team, led by Prof. Willerslev, sequenced the DNA of plant, animal, and their fossilized excrement, coprolites.
The selection of these samples lasted about 20 years and allowed us to fully understand why the majestic animals died out.
After the end of the last cooling, the glaciers began to melt.
The environment quickly became quite humid, leading to a chain change in flora.
Typical mamut habitats and pastures became increasingly swampy and vegetation changed accordingly.
As a result, there is simply no food left typical for animals.
From birth to death: scientists have fully investigated the life path of the mammoth
Giants did not have time to adapt to rapid changes, so the total number of mammoths was constantly declining.
Because of this, isolated and partially isolated animal populations arose, which already caused little genetic diversity.
It is clear that all this did not positively affect the chances of survival.
Scientists say climate change is critical.
When such changes destroyed mammoths and probably another megafauna.
Today, we live in a time when the average temperature on the planet is rising again, so we need to take this “harsh lesson ” seriously.

According to most recent research, what is the primary cause of wooly mammoth extinction?

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
shrank grassland
pastures becoming swampy
food sources disappearing

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Human hunting compounded these environmental pressures, as archaeological evidence from sites like Siberia’s Berelekh ‘mammoth graveyard’ indicates that early humans scavenged and hunted mammoths for meat, ivory, and tools over extended periods.

Title:

Content:
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

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peer-reviewed publication

trusted source

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Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with woolly beasts

Woolly mammoths are evocative of a bygone era, when Earth was gripped within an Ice Age. Current knowledge places early mammoth ancestors in the Pliocene (2.58–5.33 million years ago, Ma) before their populations expanded in the Pleistocene (2.58 Ma–11,700 years ago, kyr). However, as climate changed, their numbers dwindled to isolated populations in modern Siberia and Alaska, until their last dated survival 4 kyr ago.

In the East Siberian Arctic (>70 °N), there is not only evidence of significant woolly mammoth populations, but also how humans interacted with them, the focus of new research in Quaternary Science Reviews.

Along the Berelekh River, Russia, a 'mammoth graveyard' can be found. Here, thousands of disarticulated bones, representing a minimum of 156 individual mammoths, found alongside an indicate the close proximity of these two communities, forming the Berelekh geoarchaeological complex.

Dr. Vladimir Pitulko, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and colleagues aimed to assess the relationship between the 'mammoth graveyard' and the archaeological site through a re-examination of stratigraphic and paleogeographic data obtained in 2009, with new fieldwork focused on the left riverbanks where have readily yielded from their home in the sediment and appeared on the water's edge. Alongside them are remains of Pleistocene hare, Arctic fox and wolves, as well as soot and charcoal from hearths and worked mammoth tusks (one being an unfinished throwing spear).

The researchers suggest humans created these bone accumulations as a byproduct of the production of mammoth ivory technology, while hares may have been targeted for fur to produce winter clothing.

Notably, evidence of blowfly pupae activity on cavities in skulls and bones is indicative that the mammoth carcasses were added to the 'graveyard' de-fleshed. Indeed, there appears to be evidence of sorting of the bones, with only the most valuable transported to Berelekh from the area in which the mammoth was killed, leaving behind parts such as spinal columns, carpal ('hand') and tarsal ('foot') bones.

There are three radiocarbon dated peaks in woolly mammoth accumulation at 11.8, 12.2 and 12.4 kyr ago, which fall within known human settlement of the area (11.2–12.4 kyr ago) during the Bølling-Allerød deglacial, when the warmed and pollen evidence suggests the region became more arid.

Fluctuations in the abundance of mammoths in the 'graveyard' suggest human settlement of the area may also have changed through time (frequent occupation but not permanent), which the researchers attribute to on the floodplain permitting suitability for erecting campsites.

Radiocarbon dating of mammoth remains identifies their presence here pre-dating human settlement (beginning ~12.5 kyr ago), but also shows that humans remained in the area (until ~11.2 kyr ago) after mass mammoth remains accumulation declined (~11.8 kyr ago).

Given this, four possible causes are suggested by the scientists to explain such a significant mass accumulation of bones: 1) mass death by natural causes or human, 2) repeated group deaths in the same location, likely due to human predation, 3) concentration of remains by , such as river action, or 4) solely derived from human predation or scavenging from deceased carcasses.

However, the latter is considered to be the most likely to produce useful tools from ivory tusks, as well as meat to feed the community, as there is no evidence on the bones for a cause of mass death, radiocarbon ages do not cluster into multiple phases for recurrent death deposits and stream flows were unlikely to reach sufficient velocities to transport such heavy bones.

These findings are concurrent with mammoth remains at the Yana Paleolithic site, also in Siberia. Here, estimates suggest the 'graveyard' increased by 1–2 mammoths per year rather than a mass death event, a figure Dr. Pitulko and colleagues conclude could be similar or even higher for Berelekh.

This research is significant as it alters the previously-held belief that there was a lag of 50–80 years between mammoth bone accumulation from natural processes (such as deposition in flood channels) and , instead now defining a close relationship between the two over 700–800 years. Sadly, now that human-mammoth relationship has continued as ivory hunters have looted the site beyond further study.

More information: Vladimir V. Pitulko et al, From the Berelekh 'mammoth graveyard' to Berelekh geo-archaeological complex: Paleoenvironment, site formation processes, and human-mammoth relationships, Quaternary Science Reviews (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.108692

Journal information: Quaternary Science Reviews

© 2024 Science X Network

Citation: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with woolly beasts (2024, June 10) retrieved 10 June 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-06-siberia-mammoth-graveyard-reveals-year.html
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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Stone Age tools, such as Clovis points and spears, enabled humans to hunt mammoths effectively, with remains found alongside artifacts suggesting organized hunting practices that further reduced mammoth populations.

Title:

Content: Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard: Why an Ice Age discovery near Swindon has excited archaeologists

David Attenborough visited the site where the bones of several mammoths have been found alongside tools used by Neanderthals, for a new BBC documentary

If you were hoping to find the remains of Ice Age beasts, you might expect to travel to Siberia, not Swindon. But that is exactly where Sally and Neville Hollingworth, two amateur archaeologists from Wiltshire, made a spectacular find.

Exploring a quarry north of the town in 2017, they spotted something sticking up out of the ground. They were astonished to find it was the fossilised humerus – a leg bone – of a Steppe mammoth, a forerunner of the more famous woolly mammoth.

Further excavation of the site revealed three more mammoths, as well as a Steppe bison and a brown bear, all perfectly preserved in the prehistoric riverbed of the Thames.

Sally Hollingworth also disinterred a rare hand axe made of flint, lying beside the remains. As the dig progressed, more handmade tools were unearthed – suggesting there was a relationship between the animals and humans.

This story – and the discoveries still emerging from the site – is the subject of an absorbing new BBC documentary, Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, airing after Christmas. In this one-off film, Sir David Attenborough, who has been a passionate fossil-hunter since he was a small boy, joins the excavation and investigates the importance of the finds.

Unlike most mammoth bones, which are “merely” tens of thousands of years old, experts using state-of-the-art soil-dating technology estimate the site discovered by the Hollingworths dates back 215,000 years. These are some the oldest mammoth remains ever unearthed in the UK.

The human-made implements could also be gamechangers for our understanding of the lives and capabilities of the Neanderthals, who were supplanted soon afterwards by our own species, Homo Sapiens.

Led by Professor Ben Garrod from the University of East Anglia, the excavation prompts – and helps to answer – many fundamental questions: Why were the mammoths at this particular place? How did they meet their ends? Could the Neanderthals have killed them or was there some kind of cataclysmic event?

The Hollingworths, who both have day jobs in an office and whose house is a wondrous small museum dedicated to fossils, feel a real connection with their discovery. They even used the hand-axe to cut their wedding cake – before, Attenborough jokes, eating “a mammoth meal.” (As archaeologists might say, the old ones are the best.)

Sally Hollingworth recollects her emotions when she first picked up the hand-axe. “I had the feeling that I was the first human to touch this stone tool in thousands of years.”

Attenborough agrees. “It’s a great thrill, this whole business, isn’t it?” he says. “The finds of this remarkable site have given us a rare glimpse of early Britain, a time when humans were fully immersed in the wild, living as part of Nature.”

Garrod is equally moved by the whole venture. Sitting in the mud on the site with three colleagues, he exclaims: “Isn’t it wonderful to think that the last time someone sat exactly in this spot with a little group of people, and that stone tool in their hands as a mammoth was lying there, was 200,000 years ago? We are talking about it now hundreds of thousands of years later. It’s quite poignant, isn’t it?”

Lisa Wescott Wilkins, an archaeologist whose company DigVentures is excavating the site, reinforces the significance of the discovery by describing her own joy when she first visited the quarry north of Swindon two years ago.

“I can remember the feeling of stepping onto the site for the first time very, very clearly because it’s something that I had never expected to experience in my career as an archaeologist,” she tells i. “Just seeing a mammoth tusk in the ground, and knowing what had been found close to it, and feeling the potential of the site – it was heart-stopping. I’m still buzzing really!”

Wescott Wilkins’ excitement was heightened when she and three colleagues helped lift an exceedingly heavy one-and-a-half-metre long mammoth tusk from the site. “If someone asks me how much it weighs, I’ll just have to say, ‘Well, it’s four-people’s worth!’”

The archaeologist is particularly pleased by the discovery of the flint hand-axe, “because what that might be showing is the actual interaction of the Neanderthals with the mammoths. We have bones that look to the naked eye like they’ve got cut marks on them. If they do, that is a smoking gun for this time period. It means the mammoths could have been either hunted or scavenged.

“The bones are in such amazing condition. They haven’t been knocked around. They are exactly where they fell. Also, the tools are still so sharp, you could use them today. So this is really indicating that an episode happened here. Such evidence has never been found before. My heart speeds up even thinking about it!”

Wescott Wilkins adds that “archaeology is so exciting because it gives you that sense of touching something that is bigger than yourself, and that really applies to this site. It’s very, very special. As an archaeologist, you can never know everything – and what fires me up about this site are all the amazing new things I’m learning. That is a fantastic reason to get out of bed every morning.”

Although prehistoric, this site also tells a very pertinent, up-to-the-minute story about climate change. The Neanderthals had to adapt rapidly as temperatures dropped steeply during the Ice Age.

“The Neanderthals were having to deal with changes in the landscape that were beyond their control,” says Wescott Wilkins. “Weather events would have affected the environment and the amount of food that they could find.

“All that was happening around them and they had to cope with it. Looking at the impact of climate change on this Neanderthal population, it’s definitely a cautionary tale about how far it can change the way we live.”

Attenborough echoes those sentiments: “It is thought that Neanderthals may have been around for some 400,000 years. Their survival relied on their instinctive understanding of the natural world. Whether our own species can thrive for quite as long remains to be seen.”

But we leave the last word to the woman without whom none of these extraordinary advances in our understanding of prehistory would have been possible. How would Sally Hollingworth sum up this venture? “It’s like a time travel through the gravel.”

Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard, BBC1, Thursday 30 December, 8pm

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The combined effects of habitat loss and human predation created isolated mammoth populations with reduced genetic diversity, making them less adaptable to environmental changes and hastening their extinction.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

In isolated regions like Wrangel Island, mammoths persisted for thousands of years after their mainland counterparts went extinct, but their eventual disappearance was likely due to sudden environmental or ecological events rather than genetic factors.

Title:

Content: BACK TO TOP
A new study has refuted the mystery of the extinction of the last mammoths
Photo: Mauricio Antón / CC BY 2.5
A new study by an international team of scientists has found that the extinction of mammoths in the Wrangel Islands, which were the last on Earth, has more questions than answers.
The last population of woolly mammoths living on Wrangel Island died out 4,000 years ago.
The reason was closely related crossing - to this conclusion came the Russian scientist Sergei Vartanyan.
A group of Russian and European scientists analyzed the genomes of mammoths from Wrangel Island and their relatives from the mainland and found that the animals died not from incest, but from something else.
The herd, which turned out to be cut off on Wrangel Island, grew from eight heads to a number of 200-300 individuals in 20 generations.
Analysis of mutations in island mammoths did show that they had closely related interbreeding, resulting in low genetic diversity.
But the most dangerous mutations have disappeared from the genome.
"We can now confidently reject the idea that the population was simply too small and that they were doomed to extinction for genetic reasons.
This means that there was probably some random event that killed them, and if this random event had not happened, the mammoths would have survived to this day, ” said the author of the work, Love Dalen from the Center for Paleogenetics in Sweden.
More on the subject
Unusual burial of a man with the head of a ram found in Altai
Archaeologists have found the oldest wine in the world
Russia has a different drinking style
Science has found out what led to the sex of people with Neanderthals
see all

According to most recent research, what cause of wooly mammoth extinction is not as important as previously believed?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

The extinction of mammoths disrupted ecosystems, as their grazing and movement had maintained grasslands, stored carbon, and regulated methane levels, highlighting the long-term ecological consequences of their loss.

Title:

Content: Nature and Wildlife: Could woolly mammoths come back from extinction?

Last updated at 05:35
Getty Images
Woolly mammoths once roamed the planet before becoming extinct 4000 years ago, but could they soon be revived?

Woolly mammoths roamed some of the coldest places on Earth before becoming extinct around 4,000 years ago, but a new bioscience company, has plans to bring them back.

Scientists are planning to use DNA collected from frozen woolly mammoth remains that have been recovered, such as bones, hair, tusks, and teeth, to create a new version of the extinct giant.

The company Colossal is raising millions for their project and say the first calves could arrive in six years.

Professor George Church, co-founder of Colossal, said: "Our goal is to make a cold-resistant elephant, but it is going to look and behave like a mammoth".

The project sounds a lot like the plot of Jurassic Park, and you would be right to think so!

What is a woolly mammoth?
Getty Images
A woolly mammoth looks a lot like elephants you see today, but they have lots of fur and two big tusks!

A woolly mammoth is the extinct hairy cousin of today's elephants - they even lived at the same time as early humans did.

They were a huge part of the Arctic eco-system and they roamed across the grasslands of North America, Russia, and Europe.

How will scientists bring the woolly mammoth back?
Getty Images
The Asian elephants are a close relative of the extinct woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth and Asian elephants share a 99.6% similarity in DNA, according to the company.

Scientists say they hope to use the DNA from both elephants to create a new type of elephant, one that can survive in very cold temperatures.

Once the DNA is combined, scientists will insert it into an embryo, which is the early stage of an unborn animal. An Asian elephant would then carry the new elephant until it's ready for birth.

Technically, the new woolly mammoth isn't an exact copy of the extinct animal, but a new version of the Asian elephant.

Why do scientists want to bring the woolly mammoth back?
PA Media
By using DNA taken from elephant tusks, fur and teeth, scientists can use it to mix with the DNA of an Asian elephant

Colossal believe that a healthy heard of woolly mammoth-like elephants could help restore grasslands and ecosystems in the Arctic, and combat climate change.

The grasslands in the Arctic are thought to help battle climate change by capturing and storing carbon, as well as helping maintain methane levels in the atmosphere.

They say the technology used could also be used to help critically endangered species avoid extinction.