The extinction of the woolly mammoth is a complex phenomenon influenced by a combination of environmental changes and human activities, with the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene marking a critical period of decline for the species.

During the last Ice Age, the retreat of glaciers and the warming climate transformed the mammoth's grassland habitats into forests and wetlands, significantly reducing the availability of their preferred vegetation and pastures.

Rapid climatic shifts, such as increased rainfall and the formation of rivers and marshes, further diminished the vegetation suitable for mammoths, while the speed of these changes outpaced the species' ability to adapt.

The mammoth steppe, once rich in grasses and herbs, was overtaken by shrubs and mosses during the early Holocene, a transformation driven by warming temperatures and the decline of large herbivores like mammoths that had maintained open grasslands.

Paleoclimate records indicate that the warming climate at the end of the Pleistocene led to significant changes in vegetation, transforming mammoth steppe grasslands into shrub-dominated landscapes and reducing the availability of food for woolly mammoths.

Radiocarbon dating of mammoth remains from Siberia shows peaks in bone accumulation during the Bølling-Allerød deglacial period, a time of warming and increased aridity, underscoring the role of climate change in their population decline.

Vegetation shifts due to warming temperatures replaced tundra-steppe habitats with forests and wetlands, drastically reducing the availability of grasses and other vegetation essential for mammoth survival.

The reduction in ice sheets and subsequent changes in sea levels during the end of the Pleistocene further altered vegetation, replacing mammoth grasslands with swamp plants and forests, which contributed to their decline in population and geographic range.

As their habitats shrank, mammoths were increasingly confined to smaller areas, limiting their ability to roam vast distances and making them more vulnerable to predators, including human hunters.

Rising sea levels isolated populations of woolly mammoths, such as those on Wrangel Island, which further restricted their range and contributed to their eventual extinction.

Archaeological evidence from sites like Gobelsburg, Austria, suggests that early humans hunted woolly mammoths, as mammoth bones were found stacked alongside charcoal and stone artifacts, indicating organized hunting practices.

The Berelekh 'mammoth graveyard' in Siberia provides further evidence of human interaction with mammoths, as worked tusks and hearth remains suggest humans scavenged or hunted mammoths for ivory and meat over an 800-year period.

Stone Age tools, such as Clovis points, were highly effective for hunting and butchering large animals like mammoths, supporting the hypothesis that early humans used advanced tools to exploit these megafauna.

Early humans developed tools such as spears and hand axes, enabling them to hunt woolly mammoths effectively, as evidenced by archaeological sites where mammoth bones are found alongside human-made implements and signs of butchering.

The Berelekh River in Siberia hosts a 'mammoth graveyard' containing thousands of disarticulated mammoth bones alongside evidence of human activity, such as hearths and worked ivory, suggesting humans scavenged or hunted mammoths in the area.

In Gobelsburg, Austria, archaeologists uncovered a dense layer of mammoth bones, stone artifacts, and charcoal, indicating that early humans may have used traps or natural topography to hunt mammoths.

The Kamptal region in Austria revealed mammoth remains alongside flint artifacts and jewelry, suggesting that humans hunted and processed mammoths for meat, hides, and ivory, aligning with broader evidence of human predation on megafauna during the Pleistocene.

Research on mammoth movements in Alaska indicates that their predictable migration patterns made them vulnerable to human hunters, who could intercept them at key locations, exacerbating pressures on their populations.

The extinction of woolly mammoths was significantly influenced by rapid climate change at the end of the Ice Age, which led to the melting of glaciers and a shift in vegetation from grasslands to swampy environments, reducing their food sources and habitats.

Human activity compounded these pressures, as early humans hunted mammoths extensively for meat, tools, and shelter materials, further reducing their numbers and contributing to their eventual extinction.

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

Genetic studies of the woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island revealed that their extinction was not due to inbreeding but likely caused by a sudden and mysterious environmental or ecological event.

The extinction of woolly mammoths significantly altered the ecosystems they inhabited, as their disappearance led to a shift from grassland habitats to forests and wetlands, reducing biodiversity and productivity in these regions.

Mammoths played a crucial role in nutrient cycling and seed dispersal, and their extinction likely disrupted these processes, leading to less fertile soils and diminished ecosystem productivity over time.

The absence of mammoths also impacted Arctic ecosystems, where their grazing and movement helped maintain grasslands that stored carbon and regulated methane levels, suggesting their extinction may have contributed to changes in climate dynamics.

Climate models have been used to reconstruct the environmental conditions that contributed to the woolly mammoth’s extinction, revealing how warming climates reduced grassland habitats critical for mammoth survival and replaced them with forests and wetlands.

These models also demonstrate that rapid climate shifts, such as increased rainfall and vegetation changes, outpaced the mammoths’ ability to adapt, leading to food scarcity and habitat loss.

The extinction of woolly mammoths highlights the profound impact humans can have on ecosystems, as hunting pressures combined with habitat loss due to climate warming significantly contributed to their decline.

Human interactions with mammoths, such as the use of their ivory for tools and the establishment of hunting sites, demonstrate how early humans exploited megafauna, potentially accelerating their extinction by targeting predictable migration patterns.

The loss of mammoths and other megafauna disrupted nutrient cycles and ecosystem dynamics, as their role in seed and nutrient distribution diminished, illustrating how human-driven extinctions can lead to long-term ecological consequences.

Radiocarbon dating has been instrumental in establishing the timeline of woolly mammoth extinction, with studies identifying peaks in mammoth bone accumulation during periods of climate warming and human settlement.

The isolated population of woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island persisted for 6,000 years after their mainland counterparts went extinct, highlighting the role of geographic isolation in prolonging species survival under changing environmental conditions.

The survival of mammoths on Wrangel Island until approximately 4,000 years ago demonstrates that isolated populations can endure significant environmental shifts, providing insights into how geographic and ecological factors influence species resilience and extinction dynamics.

The extinction of woolly mammoths is attributed to a combination of climate change and human hunting, with warming temperatures at the end of the Ice Age leading to the replacement of their grassland habitats by forests and wetlands.

Similarly, other Ice Age megafauna, such as the giant ground sloth and cave bear, faced extinction due to rapid climate shifts that altered vegetation and ecosystems, compounded by human hunting and competition for resources.

In the case of woolly mammoths, archaeological evidence from sites like Siberia's Berelekh 'mammoth graveyard' suggests humans scavenged and hunted these animals, using their ivory for tools and their meat for sustenance.

The extinction of the woolly mammoth is a complex phenomenon influenced by a combination of environmental changes and human activities, with the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene marking a critical period of decline for the species.

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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

When did the wooly mammoth mostly become extinct?

During the last Ice Age, the retreat of glaciers and the warming climate transformed the mammoth's grassland habitats into forests and wetlands, significantly reducing the availability of their preferred vegetation and pastures.

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?

Rapid climatic shifts, such as increased rainfall and the formation of rivers and marshes, further diminished the vegetation suitable for mammoths, while the speed of these changes outpaced the species' ability to adapt.

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?

The mammoth steppe, once rich in grasses and herbs, was overtaken by shrubs and mosses during the early Holocene, a transformation driven by warming temperatures and the decline of large herbivores like mammoths that had maintained open grasslands.

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?

Paleoclimate records indicate that the warming climate at the end of the Pleistocene led to significant changes in vegetation, transforming mammoth steppe grasslands into shrub-dominated landscapes and reducing the availability of food for woolly mammoths.

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?

Radiocarbon dating of mammoth remains from Siberia shows peaks in bone accumulation during the Bølling-Allerød deglacial period, a time of warming and increased aridity, underscoring the role of climate change in their population decline.

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:

fact-checked

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
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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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?

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?

Vegetation shifts due to warming temperatures replaced tundra-steppe habitats with forests and wetlands, drastically reducing the availability of grasses and other vegetation essential for mammoth survival.

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?

The reduction in ice sheets and subsequent changes in sea levels during the end of the Pleistocene further altered vegetation, replacing mammoth grasslands with swamp plants and forests, which contributed to their decline in population and geographic range.

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?

As their habitats shrank, mammoths were increasingly confined to smaller areas, limiting their ability to roam vast distances and making them more vulnerable to predators, including human hunters.

Title:

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During the last ice age, woolly mammoths were among the largest creatures to walk the North American landscape. Now, a team of American and Canadian researchers has discovered that the elephantine beasts took the “walking” part of their job description quite seriously.

Based on an analysis of a single tusk from an adult male woolly mammoth found in Alaska, the scientists determined that the animal journeyed about 70,000 kilometres over the course of its life – a trip equivalent to nearly twice around the world.

“The range is staggering. ... He definitely moved across a huge, huge area,” said Clement Bataille, an assistant professor of earth and environmental science at the University of Ottawa and a co-author on the study.

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Dr. Bataille said the high degree of mobility may have been part of the mammoth’s mating strategy. In comparison, African elephants can travel a lot, too, he added, and males typically depart from the groups they are born into once they reach sexual maturity.

However, Dr. Bataille and his colleagues note that the requirement for such a large range to roam in may have ultimately hastened the extinction of the species once the climate warmed and the shaggy grazers were hemmed in by shifting vegetation patterns. That, in turn, would have left them more vulnerable to predators, including human hunters.

The study began in 2018 when Matthew Wooller, director of the Stable Isotope Facility at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, invited Dr. Bataille and other colleagues to join an effort to extract information from a mammoth fossil discovered in 2010 on the north side of the Brooks mountain range, a few hundred kilometres from the Arctic Ocean. The fossil dates back 17,000 years, to a time when much of Alaska was a glacier-free grass plain connected to Siberia by the Bering land bridge.

The researchers nicknamed their specimen “Kik,” after a river system near the place where it was found.

Using the mammoth’s sliced-open tusk, they obtained detailed measurements of oxygen and strontium isotopes that were locked in the ivory material. The mammoth acquired the isotopes, which vary according to local geology, through the vegetation and water it consumed over the course of its life. As the tusks grew at the rate of about five to six centimetres each year, they recorded changes in isotope levels, which reveal when and how often the animal moved between locations with different geology.

The team also tested isotope levels in rodents that were gathered in different parts of Alaska as part of museum collections. That allowed them to match their mammoth isotope measurements to geographic locations. Finally, they used artificial intelligence software to reconstruct possible paths the mammoth may have taken, working backward from the location where it died at the age of 28.

The results suggest that Kik began its life in the Yukon River basin of central Alaska. As a juvenile it moved regularly in a north-south pattern, during a time when it was likely part of a herd, the researchers said. At about age 16 its movements transitioned to longer distance travel, often centred on certain core areas where it stayed for periods of time before setting out for new pastures.

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“It just takes off and goes on these 500- to 600-kilometre trips all at one time, going from one core area to the next,” Dr. Bataille said. The study found that some of the places where the mammoth lingered are frequented today by migrating herds of caribou.

Jeffrey Rasic, a study co-author and archaeologist with the U.S. National Parks Service based in Fairbanks, said the data suggest that Kik followed a predictable sequence of movements. If that was typical for Alaskan mammoths, it would have provided a huge incentive for hunters moving into the area from Asia to situate themselves in places where they could reliably expect to meet their quarry at certain times of the year, rather than pursuing them over a vast landscape.

“That would be an ideal set-up for intercepting a really big ticket meal item like a mammoth,” he said.

Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University at Buffalo who was not involved in the study, said that while it’s not surprising to find animals moving over great distances, it’s quite a different matter to show that it happened in a species that no longer exists.

“That’s the trick that makes this study interesting,” he said. “It helps us better reconstruct the behaviour and ecology of mammoths in a way that’s really remarkable for an extinct species.”

Dr. Lynch, who has studied the genetics of the last known population of woolly mammoths, which died out about 4,000 years ago, said it’s an open question whether large-scale movement was a disadvantage.

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“We tend to think that widely distributed species which are mobile ... might be better able to find new habitats should the environment change. But could mammoths find refuge in a world that was warming?” he said.

One obvious limitation of the study is that its conclusions depend entirely on the movements of a single individual. Dr. Bataille said that he and his colleagues plan to perform a similar analysis on a female mammoth specimen for comparison.

The team’s study was published Thursday in the journal Science.

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How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Rising sea levels isolated populations of woolly mammoths, such as those on Wrangel Island, which further restricted their range and contributed to their eventual extinction.

Title:

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In-Breeding Likely Didn't End the Last of the Mammoth Population

A study of the last likely surviving mammoth population shows that genetics from in-breeding likely did not lead to their demise.

By Paul Smaglik
Jun 27, 2024 6:20 PMJun 27, 2024 6:22 PM
Wrangel Island mammoth tusk (Credit: Love Dalén)

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It would seem obvious that rising sea levels that cut off the last population of woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island from the Siberian coast 10,000 years ago caused in-breeding, leading to their eventual extinction. But a new genetic analysis, reported in Cell, counters that claim.

That result was unexpected, since an earlier report indicated that the mammoth population likely built up harmful genetic mutations, according to Love Dalén, a scientist with the Centre for Palaeogenetics of Sweden, and one of the paper’s authors.

“I was fairly surprised both at how few the mammoths on Wrangel Island were in the beginning (less than 10 individuals), and that we did not find any evidence for an accumulation of highly deleterious mutations,” Dalén says. He calls the relative lack of harmful mutations surprising, because an earlier paper published in 2017 in PLOS Genetics predicted they may have played a factor.

Natural Selection and Genetic Drift

The genetic story of this population — which likely started from 8 individuals and grew to 200 to 300 mammoths over 6,000 years within 20 generations — is a bit more complicated. Two sometimes competing genetic factors were at play.

Natural selection tends to purge harmful variants, because offspring carrying them would be less likely to survive. But genetic drift works to preserve mutations across generations.

This effect tends to be stronger in smaller populations, so it would make sense that it would impact the Wrangel Island mammoths.

Read More: Rapid Evolution Changes Species in Real Time

What Made the Island Mammoths go Extinct?

Although it appears that these two genetic forces competed, it wasn’t necessarily a fair fight.

“Whereas genetic drift affects all deleterious mutations in the same way, natural selection will be stronger the more deleterious a mutation is,” says Dalén. “That way, natural selection is expected to remove the very deleterious mutations from the population, while genetic drift leads to an increase in slightly deleterious ones.”

Therefore, over time, the most harmful mutations were purged, while a bunch of relatively innocuous ones remained. So, if inbreeding didn’t do in the mammoths, what did?

“This leaves us with some other possibilities, such as a disease outbreak, some sort of tundra fire, or very short-term climatic perturbation, where the latter two could have ruined the plant growth for one or a few seasons, which could have had disastrous consequences for such a small population,” Dalén says.

Read More: How Do We Know When a Species Is Extinct?

Conservation of Today

Although the interplay between natural selection and genetic drift didn’t appear to wipe out the mammoths of yore, it still has implications for conservation efforts of today.

For example, conservationists wishing to preserve a species that has almost gone extinct, but has partially recovered, could look to the Wrangel Island mammoths. The implication is that moving a few individuals between two isolated populations could slow genetic drift.

The study’s authors have yet to analyze DNA from the most recent Wrangel Island mammoths. However, researchers have found fossils from the last 300 years of the mammoths’ existence and plan to analyze their genomes.

Read More: Scientists Are Trying to Save These Animals From Extinction

Article Sources

Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:

Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.

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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?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

Archaeological evidence from sites like Gobelsburg, Austria, suggests that early humans hunted woolly mammoths, as mammoth bones were found stacked alongside charcoal and stone artifacts, indicating organized hunting practices.

Title:

Content: Austrian Man Discovers Hundreds of Mammoth Bones While Renovating His Wine Cellar

Owner Andreas Pernerstorfer thought he’d found a piece of wood, but then he remembered something his grandfather had said about finding teeth in the cellar decades ago

Andreas Pernerstorfer was renovating his wine cellar in northern Austria when he stumbled upon something unusual.

Initially, he thought he’d found a piece of wood that had been left behind by his grandfather, he tells BBC News’ Bethany Bell.

But then Pernerstorfer remembered something his grandfather had mentioned once about finding teeth in the cellar while renovating it decades ago. He wondered if what he thought was a piece of wood was actually something more special.

When he reported his discovery, it turned out his instincts were right: Pernerstorfer’s wine cellar was full of huge mammoth bones—at least 300 of them, reports CNN’s Lianne Kolirin.

Since the middle of May, researchers with the Austrian Archaeological Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) have been excavating the site, which is located in Gobelsburg, a small town about 45 minutes northwest of Vienna.

So far, they’ve found bones that belonged to three individual mammoths, plus charcoal and stone artifacts. They believe the bones—which were stacked on top of one another—are between 30,000 and 40,000 years old.

“I’ve worked in many parts of the world and have never seen so many mammoths in one place,” says Hannah Parow-Souchon, the Austrian Academy of Sciences archaeologist who is leading the dig, to the Washington Post’s Victoria Bisset.

Eventually, the bones will be given to the Natural History Museum Vienna for restoration. Since they started their work this spring, archaeologists have only excavated a 129-square-foot site. They hope to return in August to continue digging.

Roughly 150 years ago, a neighboring wine cellar turned up charcoal, flint artifacts and jewelry. The archaeologists think the two wine cellars probably belong to the same site. Meanwhile, other similar sites in Austria and neighboring countries were excavated more than a century ago and have “largely been lost to modern research,” according to a statement from the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

The discovery marks the “first time we’ve been able to investigate something like this in Austria using modern methods,” says Parow-Souchon in the statement. “Such a dense bone layer of mammoths is rare.”

It’s not clear how or why three different mammoths ended up in the same spot—nor whether they died there or died elsewhere and were later transported to the site. One possibility is that early humans set up a trap or took advantage of the natural topography to ensnare them.

“We have strong indications that [humans] hunted for them but we have no idea how,” says Parow-Souchon to NBC News’ Alex Holmes. “We know that elephants have issues with slopes, so maybe they were hunted on a slope and therefore vulnerable.”

Mammoths, including woolly mammoths, are the extinct ancestors of modern elephants. These huge, tusked mammals roamed the Earth during the Pleistocene and early Holocene epochs, before disappearing roughly 4,000 years ago. Today, discoveries of the remains of these massive creatures can reveal insights into the species—and the ways that early humans interacted with them.

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The Berelekh 'mammoth graveyard' in Siberia provides further evidence of human interaction with mammoths, as worked tusks and hearth remains suggest humans scavenged or hunted mammoths for ivory and meat over an 800-year period.

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, were highly effective for hunting and butchering large animals like mammoths, supporting the hypothesis that early humans used advanced tools to exploit these megafauna.

Title:

Content: Subscribe now

Humans

Stone Age blades could have been used for butchery, not just hunting

A modern butchery experiment using replicas of Stone Age tools raises new questions about how often prehistoric peoples hunted large animals such as bison or mammoths

By Jeremy Hsu

8 April 2024

Stone “Clovis points” used by prehistoric hunters to kill animals are also remarkably efficient at cutting meat off a large animal carcass – at least according to a modern bison butchering experiment. The finding complicates our knowledge of prehistoric hunting practices.

Archaeologists teamed up with modern hunters to compare how well replicas of two types of prehistoric stone tools could harvest meat from an animal carcass. They used a humanely killed bison bull weighing more than 450 kilograms.

“This study actually showed that Clovis points were more effective than what was presumed to be the butchery tool: large stone flakes,” says Metin Eren at Kent State University in Ohio.

The five hunters, associated with the MeatEater outdoor lifestyle company, took just 3 hours and 10 minutes to completely butcher the bison carcass using both stone tools. But the Clovis points achieved a butchering efficiency of 0.38 kilograms of meat per minute, whereas the handheld stone flake tools processed 0.34 kilograms of meat per minute.

The Clovis points, which were mounted on wooden handles, had the added benefit of not injuring any users, whereas four out of five experts suffered minor cuts while using the handheld stone flakes.

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But the Clovis points also required frequent resharpening during the butchering – and three of the 10 stone tools broke. “They demonstrate that the Clovis points work well, but they also demonstrate that the Clovis points break a lot,” says John Shea at Stony Brook University in New York, who was not part of the study. “And this is important because those things are not easy to make.”

Still, prehistoric peoples in the Americas may have adopted “such a labour-intensive and breakage-prone artefact” as part of social displays of group cooperation and stone working skills, says Shea.

Another surprise came from how a Clovis point snapped and broke in a way that was nearly identical to how another Clovis point on an atlatl weapon broke when hurled at an elephant carcass in a previous study. “The possibility of snap breaks being mistaken for impact breaks is an eye-opener from the standpoint of interpreting how Clovis points might have been used,” says Vance Holliday at the University of Arizona, who did not participate in the study.

That means broken Clovis points discovered at prehistoric archaeological sites may not represent a “smoking gun for hunting”, as researchers previously believed. They could instead show how people “came across an already dead animal and scavenged it”, says Eren. In other words, deducing prehistoric hunting and scavenging behaviours just got a lot more complicated.

Journal reference:

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104480

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Early humans developed tools such as spears and hand axes, enabling them to hunt woolly mammoths effectively, as evidenced by archaeological sites where mammoth bones are found alongside human-made implements and signs of butchering.

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 Berelekh River in Siberia hosts a 'mammoth graveyard' containing thousands of disarticulated mammoth bones alongside evidence of human activity, such as hearths and worked ivory, suggesting humans scavenged or hunted mammoths in the area.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

In Gobelsburg, Austria, archaeologists uncovered a dense layer of mammoth bones, stone artifacts, and charcoal, indicating that early humans may have used traps or natural topography to hunt mammoths.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The Kamptal region in Austria revealed mammoth remains alongside flint artifacts and jewelry, suggesting that humans hunted and processed mammoths for meat, hides, and ivory, aligning with broader evidence of human predation on megafauna during the Pleistocene.

Title:

Content: Woolly Mammoth Bones Unearthed in Austrian Wine Cellar

It wasn’t the first time that ancient artifacts were discovered in one of Kamptal’s wine cellars.

An Austrian winemaker renovating his cellar unearthed a trove of woolly mammoth bones that could expand our understanding of the relationship between humans and the prehistoric beasts.

Andreas Pernerstorfer’s winery is in the notable winemaking and cultural region of Kamptal in northeastern Austria. After stumbling upon the huge bones in the dirt floor, he reported his discovery to Austria’s Federal Monuments Office. The Austrian Archaeological Institute has been excavating the site since March 2024 to a depth of 55 feet below ground and says it’s the first significant paleontology site found in Austria in a century.

The bones are believed to be between 30,000 and 40,000 years old and belonged to at least three woolly mammoths. According to Hannah Parow-Souchon, the paleontologist leading the excavation, the discovery is significant because mammoth bones are rarely found packed together. This could mean they were bunched there by humans, which could indicate they were hunted and slaughtered by humans; the site might be the remains of a Holocene Epoch cookout.

Most archaeologists agree that humans gathered in groups and used spears and other tools to take down woolly mammoths and other megafauna, which would have been immense sources of meat, hides, and bones to use as raw materials for tools. This activity could have contributed to the animals’ extinction

There is some debate whether preying on the massive beasts was a regular practice for Stone Age people, and science is foggy about how a band of simple humans could get the drop on an animal that stood 10 feet tall, weighed as much as six tons, and had fearsome protective tusks. The process would reveal a lot about coordination and planning among Paleolithic people.

Parow-Souchon said in a statement from the Austrian Academy of Sciences that it is possible that humans set a trap for mammoths there. She also said it was the most significant discovery of woolly mammoth remains in more than 100 years; most such sites in Europe have been dug up and hollowed out, with their archaeological value lost over time.

This is not the first such find in Kamptal. About 150 years ago, relics of early human life—including flint artifacts, jewelry fossils, and charcoal—were discovered there in a wine cellar next door.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Research on mammoth movements in Alaska indicates that their predictable migration patterns made them vulnerable to human hunters, who could intercept them at key locations, exacerbating pressures on their populations.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The extinction of woolly mammoths was significantly influenced by rapid climate change at the end of the Ice Age, which led to the melting of glaciers and a shift in vegetation from grasslands to swampy environments, reducing their food sources and habitats.

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?

Human activity compounded these pressures, as early humans hunted mammoths extensively for meat, tools, and shelter materials, further reducing their numbers and contributing to their eventual extinction.

Title:

Content: Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius)

The most famous of the 10 mammoth species known to have existed is undoubtedly the woolly mammoth. Standing at around the same size as today’s African elephants, this magnificent animal roamed the northern hemisphere for roughly half a million years, becoming extinct by around 2000 BC.

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The reasons for the woolly mammoth’s demise are multifaceted. As the climate warmed at the end of the last Ice Age, and forests spread across the northern hemisphere, the grassland habitats in which the animal thrived were drastically reduced. This, combined with hunting pressures from humans, meant the woolly mammoth population ended up being restricted to just a couple of islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska.

Some scientists hope to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction, but with African and Asian elephant populations still facing a huge range of threats, many believe that our focus should be on preserving those animals instead.

Dodo (Raphus cucullatus)

For a large bird species that only became extinct relatively recently, we know surprisingly little about the dodo and its behaviours. In fact, there is just one near- complete dodo skeleton with bones from one bird, and there is only one specimen that contains soft tissue.

What we do know is that the dodo was restricted to Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Madagascar and part of the Mascarene Archipelago, and was a relative to doves and pigeons. It’s thought that natural selection caused the animal to evolve into a flightless bird, with the species no longer needing to fly on an island with no predators.

However, when humans – and the animals they brought with them – first came to Mauritius in the 16th century, the dodo became extremely vulnerable. As well as being hunted for meat, it suffered from habitat loss and the predation of its eggs, resulting in its extinction by c1680.

Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus)

Also known as the Tasmanian tiger or Tasmanian wolf, the thylacine was a carnivorous mammal originally found in Australia and New Guinea. Despite being similar in appearance to the domestic dog, it was actually a marsupial – a group of mammals that also includes kangaroos, koalas, wombats and opossums – and had a pouch.

Once widespread, the thylacine became extinct on the Australian mainland no less than 2,000 years ago, although the reasons for this are unknown. The species then became restricted to the island of Tasmania, off the south coast of Victoria, with between 2,000–4,000 individuals remaining when the British arrived in the early 19th century.

Eventually, the thylacine was persecuted as it was deemed a threat to livestock. The last known captive individual died from exposure at a zoo in Hobart in 1936 after being accidentally left out overnight. It’s thought that the last wild thylacines died in the 1960s, but that hasn’t stopped persistent rumours over the species’ continued survival.

Great auk (Pinguinus impennis)

Despite being similar in colouration and shape and bearing the genus name Pinguinus, the great auk wasn’t a relative of penguins, but was instead a member of the same family as puffins and guillemots.

Once a relatively common species in the North Atlantic, it bred on remote rocky islands such as Funk Island off the coast of Newfoundland, which was described by one 18th- century sailor as being “entirely covered with those fowls, so close that a man could not put his foot between them.”

However, exploration of the North Atlantic seas by European sailors spelled danger for the flightless seabird, with overharvesting of its eggs and adults for meat, feathers and body parts dramatically reducing the population. Attempts were made to protect the great auk, but that only increased its worth to collectors.

Sadly, the last breeding pair were killed and their single egg accidentally crushed by fishermen on Eldey Island, Iceland, on 3 July 1844.

Xerces butterfly (Glaucopsyche xerces)

Named after the Persian kings Xerxes I and Xerxes II (whose names are sometimes spelled ‘Xerces’ in France), this diminutive blue butterfly species lived among the coastal sand dunes of the San Francisco Peninsula, where its caterpillar preferred to feed on a single plant species.

However, urban development resulted in the loss of the plant, which could not survive in disturbed soil, and thus the loss of the Xerces blue in the 1940s – the first example of a butterfly becoming extinct due to human activity in North America.

Later, the Xerces Society, a non-profit conservation organisation established in 1971, was named in memory of the lost invertebrate.

For a while, there was uncertainty as to whether the Xerces blue was a distinct species or a subspecies of another blue butterfly. However, a scientific paper published in 2021 examined the DNA of a museum specimen collected in 1928 and proved that it was indeed a distinct species.

Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)

The passenger pigeon was one of the most abundant pigeon species on the planet. Native to North America, it was called jahgowa by the Seneca Tribe, which translates to “big bread”, as it was a source of food by the Seneca and the rest of the Haudenosaunee people. Despite this, the hunting of the species was carefully regulated by rules set by each tribe.

However, after colonisation by the Europeans, hunting of the passenger pigeon increased and gradually became more industrial and commercialised. As the population declined, the species then became vulnerable to further pressures such as habitat loss and predation by other animals.

The last living passenger pigeon was a female named Martha, who was kept at Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio. She died on 1 September 1914 – one of the few times we have known the absolute date of a species’ extinction. Her death contributed to the creation of the US Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which requires permits to hunt some migratory bird species.

Golden toad (Incilius periglenes)

So-named for the brilliant yellow-orange colouration of the male (the female was black with yellow and red patterning), the golden toad has become a poster child for extinctions connected to the climate crisis.

Found in the Monteverde Cloud Forest of Costa Rica, the amphibian spent most of the year underground. It only emerged for a few days each April, with males fighting with each other around pools of rainwater in order to mate with females.

In 1987, roughly 1,500 golden toads were observed. However, the following year, only 10 toads were found, and in 1989, just one male. That one male was the last golden
toad ever seen, and the species was officially declared extinct in 2004.

While the exact cause of extinction is unknown, the climate crisis – combined with habitat loss and an infectious disease called chytridiomycosis – are all thought to have played a part.

Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer)

The baiji was a freshwater dolphin that lived in the Yangtze River in China, the third-longest river in the world. Although still listed as ‘Critically Endangered’ on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Red List, having last been assessed in 2017, the species is considered extinct by conservationists. In fact, both the last confirmed sighting of a wild individual and the death of the last captive individual occurred in 2002.

The Yangtze River is also home to the Yangtze finless porpoise, the only freshwater porpoise in the world. Like the baiji, its existence is currently threatened by overfishing, shipping traffic and noise pollution.

However, the 2017 suspension of sand mining in Dongting Lake – a flood basin of the Yangtze in China’s Hunan province – has seen the finless porpoise return to areas that it had previously been avoiding.

Pinta Island giant tortoise (Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii or Chelonoidis abingdonii)

While there is debate about whether the giant tortoises of the Galápagos Islands are subspecies of the same species or a completely different species altogether, one thing is certain: Lonesome George was the last of his kind.

George was a Pinta Island tortoise, a species (or subspecies) that was already thought to have been extinct until he was discovered alone on the island that gave George and his former companions their collective name.

There were attempts to find other Pinta Island tortoises, and to mate him with closely related females, but to no avail. He died in 2012 of natural causes when he was around 100 years old.

Curiously, scientists believe it might be possible to bring back the Pinta Island tortoise, or at least a closely related version. Researchers have discovered hybrid tortoises with Pinta Island tortoise genes on nearby Isabela Island, with their Pinta Island ancestors having been moved there by whalers and pirates.

Megan Shersby is a naturalist, science writer and communicator. She was previously editorial and digital coordinator at BBC Wildlife Magazine

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This content first appeared in the November 2023 issue of BBC History Revealed

Authors

Megan ShersbyNaturalist, writer and content creator
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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The combined effects of climate change and human hunting 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?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Genetic studies of the woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island revealed that their extinction was not due to inbreeding but likely caused by a sudden and mysterious environmental or ecological event.

Title:

Content: Disproved the popular hypothesis about the extinction of mammoths: the “mysterious event ” was the real cause of the disappearance
Scientists have refuted the popular hypothesis about the cause of the extinction of mammoths
1: 09 AM
Woolly mammoths survived on Wrangel Island for 6,000 years after the extinction of their mainland counterparts.
A new genomic study has revealed that their last population disappeared not due to genetic inbreeding, as previously thought, but as a result of a sudden and mysterious event.
The study, published in the journal Cell, found that the population of Wrangel Island, which grew from eight to 300 individuals, died 4,000 years ago not for genetic reasons.
DNA analysis of 21 mammoths showed signs of inbreeding and low genetic diversity, but the mutations were only moderately harmful and gradually disappeared.
The exact cause of the mammoths' disappearance remains unknown, but it is assumed that it was a sudden event.
Scientists are planning further studies to unravel this mystery, and believe their findings are important for modern biodiversity conservation programs.
Earlier it was reported that scientists discovered that there was an ocean in Mongolia.
Author Oleg Loginov
Oleg Loginov — HSE student, Pravda.Ru freelance correspondent

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 woolly mammoths significantly altered the ecosystems they inhabited, as their disappearance led to a shift from grassland habitats to forests and wetlands, reducing biodiversity and productivity in these regions.

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

Mammoths played a crucial role in nutrient cycling and seed dispersal, and their extinction likely disrupted these processes, leading to less fertile soils and diminished ecosystem productivity over time.

Title:

Content: How would the earth be different if modern man did not exist?
The Libyan Observatory Newspaper
LATEST NEWS
The human footprint can be seen across the planet today, from the towering skyscrapers that define our modern capitals to the pyramids and other ancient relics from our past.
Human activity also represents the sprawling open fields of agriculture, the roads that connect everything together.
But what would the world look like if humans didn ’ t exist before?
Some scientists paint a picture of a pure wilderness and an abundance of species, from fashionable to uncommon.
Trevor Worthy, a paleontologist and assistant professor at Flinders University in Australia, told Live Science: “I think it would be a much more vegetative place with a wealth of animals, of great size, spread across all continents except Antarctica. ”
A world without modern humans may also mean that our extinct human relatives, such as Neanderthals, will still exist.
And, of course, they would have changed the scene as well.
Humans shaped the world at the expense of many species, from the dodo (Raphus cucullatus) to the Tasmanian tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus), which pushed us to extinction through activities such as hunting and habitat destruction.
The rate of extinction on Earth today is more than 100 times what it would have been without humans, according to the most conservative estimates, and has not been higher since the Cretaceous and Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event that wiped out about 80% of animal species, including non-floating dinosaurs, 66 million years ago.
In other words, humans collided with the planet like an asteroid, and the dust continues to settle as wildlife continues to deteriorate.
“My great-grandfather was able to see herds of thousands of parrots in the landscape, my grandfather saw a hundred flocks, my father saw little and I ’ m lucky if I could see two in the woods, ” said Worthy.
The human-driven decline of nature suggests that Earth would be a more wild place without us, with some lost giants, such as moas, standing out the most.
This group of ostrich-like birds, some of which extend up to 11.8 feet (3.6 m) in New Zealand, evolved over millions of years.
Within 200 years of humans reaching their land 750 years ago, all nine species of moa have disappeared, along with at least 25 other vertebrate species, including the giant Haast eagles (Hieraaetus moorei) that hunted moa, according to Worthy.
The giant moa and the Haast vultures are recent examples of large animals whose eventual extinction is linked to human activities, such as unsustainable hunting and the introduction of invasive species into new habitats.
They are also indicators of what our relationship with large animals might be like elsewhere.
The survival of large animals is crucial to speculate on the existence of a land without humans, as these monsters have a significant impact on the landscape.
– Serengeti System
Soren Furby, senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, believes that humans played a key role in the disappearance of many large mammals thousands of years ago.
He led a 2015 study, published in the journal Diversity and Distributions, which suggested that without humans, the Earth would be much like the contemporary Serengeti system, an African ecosystem teeming with life.
In this scenario, extinct animals similar to those found in Serengeti today – including elephants, rhinos and lions – would live across Europe.
For example, instead of African lions (Panthera leo), there are still cave lions (Panthera spelaea), a slightly larger species that lived in Europe until about 12,000 years ago.
Meanwhile, the Americas will be home to relatives of huge elephants and bears, along with unique species, according to Forby.
"In a world without humans, there will be much more diversity than large mammals, and if you see a greater diversity than large mammals, you tend to see a more open habitat," Forby said.
Elephants and other large animals are well identified when finding food, and will not tolerate unnecessary obstacles.
“If you ’ re old enough, it might be easier to knock on a tree and eat fresh leaves on top of it, ” Forby said.
But also, if there are a large number of large mammals, there is a tendency to have fewer wooded plants in the first place, he said.
Large animals, such as elephants, are known as megafauna.
During the last ice age (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), the world was rich in megafauna, but most of them died at the end of the ice age, or in the thousands of years since.
For example, about 38 genera of large animals went extinct in North America at the end of the last ice age, according to a 2020 study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Over the past century, scientists have debated whether natural climate changes or human activities, such as overfishing, are the main reason for the decline of these large animals.
A 2021 study published in Nature concluded that climate change ultimately wiped out the woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) and other Arctic megafauna that survived the end of the ice age.
However, humans hunted mammoths.
Scientists who believe humans may have been the main factor in their extinction, such as Forby, argue that mammoths survived climate change before humans appeared and would probably survive to this day had it not been for the added pressure humans placed on them.
Christopher Dottie, an associate professor and ecologist at Northern Arizona University, is modeling how past and present large animals transport seeds and nutrients through eating and defecating.
His work indicates that the transport of elements such as phosphorus, calcium and magnesium, which are important for life, was reduced by more than 90% through the extinction of large animals.
Dotti hypothesizes that without humans, elements would be evenly distributed across the landscape.
This means more fertile soil, which makes ecosystems more productive.
Humans tend to group elements together through practices such as farming and creating fenced areas, so that these areas become less fertile over time compared to terrestrial systems, according to Dauty.
Greater fertility means that plants can devote their resources to more fruit and flowers, so that the world looks more vibrant and feeds more animals.
While it is difficult to determine how humans and megafauna have influenced climate change for thousands of years with evidence obscured over time, it is much easier to judge our impact on Earth ’ s climate today.
Through global warming, caused by activities such as burning fossil fuels, humans have raised the global average temperature by about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degrees Celsius) since the beginning of the 20th century.
Therefore, the Earth would have been at least colder without us.
A 2016 study published in the journal Nature concluded that human-induced warming would delay the next ice age by at least 100,000 years.
And it wasn't due for another 50,000 years, though, even without human delay, so it's unlikely that Earth would be in the middle of another ice age today if we didn't exist.
Humans are inevitable.
Scientists aren ’ t sure why Neanderthals went extinct about 40,000 years ago, but because they mate with Homo sapiens, parts of their DNA are found in some of us.
There were probably multiple causes of Neanderthal death, but we're a prime suspect.
Chris Stringer, a professor and research leader in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, believes competition for resources was a factor in the disappearance of Neanderthals.
“If we weren ’ t around, if we hadn ’ t come to Europe 45,000 or 50,000 years ago, I think they ’ d probably stay here, ” he told Live Science.
According to Stringer, Neanderthals lived a complex life in Europe, similar to modern humans, but they had difficulty adapting to climate change and were relatively few in number, with low genetic diversity.
This is bad news for any species, as it is a sign of inbreeding and ill health.
Stringer said Neanderthals were probably “already in trouble, and when modern humans got there too, I think that ’ s probably what pushed them to the edge. ”
Scientists are still learning about at least one human lineage that lived around the same time as modern humans and Neanderthals: Denisovans.
This lineage appears to be closer to Neanderthals than modern humans in genes and appearance, but it can be distinguished from Neanderthals with very large molars.
There is evidence of DNA in current humans living in places like New Guinea in Oceania — a finding that suggests Denisovans were in Southeast Asia interacting with ancestors of modern humans who later settled in the East, according to a 2012 study published in the journal Science.
These Denisovan interactions, along with fossil evidence, suggest that they had a larger geographic range than Neanderthals, encompassing a variety of environments and, therefore, arguably, were more adaptive than Neanderthals.
DNA evidence also suggests that Denisovans may have had greater genetic diversity than Neanderthals, according to Stringer.
Stringer said: “There ’ s no reason why Neanderthals or Denisovans shouldn ’ t do it eventually, given enough time. ”
He added that they may have overcome any potential intellectual deficiency, which is not clear to them, through evolution.
So maybe the world won ’ t look completely different after all.
Likewise, they could have made the same mistakes we have made since then.
So, global warming could have been here, but with Neanderthals or Denisovans leading it, not us.
"Who knows?"
Source: Live Science

The absence of mammoths also impacted Arctic ecosystems, where their grazing and movement helped maintain grasslands that stored carbon and regulated methane levels, suggesting their extinction may have contributed to changes in climate dynamics.

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.

Climate models have been used to reconstruct the environmental conditions that contributed to the woolly mammoth’s extinction, revealing how warming climates reduced grassland habitats critical for mammoth survival and replaced them with forests and wetlands.

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?

These models also demonstrate that rapid climate shifts, such as increased rainfall and vegetation changes, outpaced the mammoths’ ability to adapt, leading to food scarcity and habitat loss.

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 environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The extinction of woolly mammoths highlights the profound impact humans can have on ecosystems, as hunting pressures combined with habitat loss due to climate warming significantly contributed to their decline.

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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?

Human interactions with mammoths, such as the use of their ivory for tools and the establishment of hunting sites, demonstrate how early humans exploited megafauna, potentially accelerating their extinction by targeting predictable migration patterns.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The loss of mammoths and other megafauna disrupted nutrient cycles and ecosystem dynamics, as their role in seed and nutrient distribution diminished, illustrating how human-driven extinctions can lead to long-term ecological consequences.

Title:

Content: Cave lions in Europe and mammoths in the United States.
Scientists have told what the Earth would be without Homo sapiens
The researchers say that in general, the planet could be an exciting place, which would be inhabited by representatives of megafauna.
Scientists believe that without humans, the Earth would be a more wild and fertile place, in which giants such as ostrich moa birds with a height of 3.6 meters still lived.
They lived in New Zealand for millions of years, but disappeared 750 years after their land was invaded by man, writes LiveScience.
The vanished giant moas and eagles of Haast, whose wingspan was 2.6 meters or more, are a small example of how human activity has changed the planet.
The survival of such large animals is crucial in thinking about what the Earth would be like without humans, as such giants have a crucial influence on landscapes.
Senior lecturer in zoology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, Seren Forby, says humans have played a crucial role in the extinction of many large mammals.
Forby led the study, published in the journal Diversity and Distributions.
It said that without humans, the Earth would resemble an ecoregion in East Africa, the Serengeti, teeming with life.
In such a scenario, extinct animals, along with elephants, rhinos and lions, would live throughout Europe.
For example, the African lions (Panthera leo) would still be replaced by cave lions (Panthera spelaea), a larger species that lived in Europe about 12,000 years ago.
At the same time, America would be home to larger relatives of elephants and bears, as well as unique species such as the glyptodon – car-sized armadillos and giant sloths.
“In a world without humans, there would be a lot more different species of large mammals, as well as a much more open habitat, ” says Forby.
Elephants or other species of large animals do not tolerate obstacles in their search for food.
In such cases, the territory acquires a less wooded appearance.
The world would be brighter
During the last Pleistocene Ice Age (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), the Earth was rich in megafauna.
Much of it went extinct after the end of this ice age or millennia later.
A 2021 study from the journal Nature found that climate change had wiped out woolly mammoths as well as other Arctic megafauna, but humans also put additional pressure on these species by hunting them.
Christopher Doughty, an ecologist at the University of Northern Arizona, modeled how large animals, among other things, affected ecosystems by moving seeds and nutrients during eating and defecating.
The expert found that the movement of elements such as phosphorus, calcium and magnesium, which play a crucial role in life, decreased by almost 90% along with the disappearance of megafauna.
The researcher emphasizes that without human intervention, all the necessary elements would be evenly distributed throughout the landscape.
Thus, the soil would be more fertile and productive.
Agriculture and zoning make land less fertile compared to systems in the wild.
Such increased fertility means that the Earth would be much richer in crops and colors, the planet would definitely be brighter without humans.
Without humans, the climate would be different.
Human induced global warming is known to have raised the average temperature by 1 degree Celsius since the early 20th century.
Consequently, the weather on the planet would be cooler without humanity.
A 2016 study in the journal Nature found that current warming delayed the onset of the ice age by at least 100,000 years.
But this should not have happened for another 50,000 years, so it is unlikely that without humans there would be another ice age on Earth right now.
People are inevitable
Modern humans (Homo sapiens) were not always the only hominins on the planet.
The disappearance of Homo sapiens could open up new perspectives for Neanderthals.
There is no single answer to the question of why the Neanderthals died out about 40 thousand years ago.
There were probably several reasons for their disappearance, and Homo sapiens are the main suspects.
Professor Chris Stringer from the Natural History Museum in London believes that the competition between Neanderthals and humans was one of the reasons for the disappearance of the former.
“If Homo sapiens hadn ’ t come to Europe about 45,000 or 50,000 years ago, I think Neanderthals and their descendants would still have lived on Earth, ” Stringer says.
The expert notes that Neanderthals led a complex life in Europe, they faced climate change, were a small group with low genetic diversity.
“Neanderthals probably were already in distress when modern humans came to their lands, and this factor could be the last, ” the expert notes.
But humans could have influenced the survival of more than just Neanderthals.
At least there is another relative of Homo sapiens who shared land with humans and Neanderthals: the Denisovans.
This line is closer to Neanderthals than to modern humans in terms of genes and appearance.
Judging by a number of studies, people interbred with Denisovans, because modern people continue to find the DNA of Denisovans.
It is assumed that Denisovans had a wider range of habitat than Neanderthals.
They may also have more genetic diversity than Neanderthals.
"Perhaps the Denisovans were even better species for survival than the Neanderthals," Stringer said.
In general, Denisovans and Neanderthals could pave the way similar to H. sapiens, moving from hunting and gathering to the development of agriculture.
"There is no obvious reason why Neanderthals or Denisovans would not have evolved if they had the time to do so," he said.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Radiocarbon dating has been instrumental in establishing the timeline of woolly mammoth extinction, with studies identifying peaks in mammoth bone accumulation during periods of climate warming and human settlement.

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?

The isolated population of woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island persisted for 6,000 years after their mainland counterparts went extinct, highlighting the role of geographic isolation in prolonging species survival under changing environmental conditions.

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

The survival of mammoths on Wrangel Island until approximately 4,000 years ago demonstrates that isolated populations can endure significant environmental shifts, providing insights into how geographic and ecological factors influence species resilience and extinction dynamics.

Title:

Content: Tver
+ 26 °
Society17 July 2023 13: 55
Mammoth, musk ox and woolly rhinoceros: In the Tver region, a student expedition discovered a unique “grave ” of animals of the Ice Age
The discovery was highly appreciated in the scientific community and in the Ministry of Education and Science
First-year students of the Faculty of Geography and Geoecology of TVSU under the guidance of the teacher Alexander Zherenkov visited a very successful expedition.
Photo: TvSU
In the far-distant antiquity, mammoth giants, woolly rhinos and other animals of the Ice Age roamed the territory of the Upper Volga region, blown by piercing winds...
Then there was a glacier, and everyone died.
The remains of animals of this period are searched and found in the expanses of the region by archaeologists, but recently there was a find, frankly, unique.
First-year students of the Faculty of Geography and Geoecology of Tver State University near Staritsa during their training practice discovered the remains of several animals of that era.
Before that, no one found the remains of several animals in one place - well, such a common "grave" of the Ice Age, whose age is more than 12 thousand years.
The discovery of students has already been noted by the scientific community.
- Limestone quarries under the Old Lady abound with ancient artifacts: here archaeologists find spirifera, belemnites, crystal brushes, sea urchins needles.
But such a find happened for the first time, - commented in the Ministry of education and science of Russia.
- Discovered in one place immediately fragments of teeth, tusk, skull, mammoth tubular bones, part of the skull of muscle-ox, bone of woolly rhinoceros.
They belong to the Pleistocene era - it is just informally called the Ice Age, - explained in a conversation with "KP" -Tver "expedition participant, head of the Department of Zoology and Physiology of the Biological Faculty of TVSU, Doctor of Biological Sciences Andrei Zinoviev.
Bone of a mammoth.
Photo: TvSU
The scientist noted that with such findings, the students-interns of the university were not lucky for a long time, more than 10 years for sure.
- On the territory of our region, in general, the finds of individual remains of megafauna animals, that is, the same mammoths or woolly rhinos, is not something striking, - added the doctor of biological sciences. - They are often found along large reservoirs, in our case along the Volga.
They lived in these places, moving behind the retreating glacier.
There were cases when parts of the bones or the tusk of a mammoth were handed over to us by fishermen.
To this day, of the species whose remains have been discovered, only the musk ox has survived.
Today, its individuals live in the Arctic zone of tundra and polar deserts.
The scientist also told about an interesting fact: the most recent mammoths lived on the island, which now belongs to Russia and bears the name of Wrangel, in the Arctic Ocean.
This is a deserted island, where in the summer the temperature rises slightly above zero degrees, and mostly below 30 degrees of frost.
Those mammoths degraded in size (became smaller) and became extinct about 4,000 years ago.
That is, it turns out that they existed when in Egypt there were already pyramids.
The remains of an ancient animal.
Photo: TvSU
As for the woolly rhinoceros, this species lived in Europe and Asia, and finally disappeared 14-8 thousand years ago.
It is not inferior in size to modern rhinos.
Its height in the shoulders was about 1.5 meters, reaching even two meters in large individuals, the length of the body was about 4.5 meters.
As it is not difficult to guess, this representative of the Ice Age, of course, was covered with a powerful coat.
Interestingly, for a long time the bones of the woolly rhinoceros were taken by people for the remains of various mythical creatures.
For example, there is a case when the skull of an ancient animal in one of the cities of Europe in the XIV century was mistaken for the remains of a dragon.
A rhinoceros skeleton, found in 1663 near the German city of Quedlinburg, was attributed to a unicorn.
When asked where the found remains of the Ice Age animals will be stored, Andrei Zinoviev said that the main part will remain at the biological faculty of Tver University and will be presented in the natural science exposition, and another part will most likely be transferred to the Tver Polytechnic University.
Well, the trainee students are happy with such a successful expedition.
After all, when you look at a mammoth in a museum - one thing, and when you find his remains with your own hand - another.

When did the last population of wooly mammoth become extinct?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

The extinction of woolly mammoths is attributed to a combination of climate change and human hunting, with warming temperatures at the end of the Ice Age leading to the replacement of their grassland habitats by forests and wetlands.

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
shrank grassland
pastures becoming swampy

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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?

Similarly, other Ice Age megafauna, such as the giant ground sloth and cave bear, faced extinction due to rapid climate shifts that altered vegetation and ecosystems, compounded by human hunting and competition for resources.

Title:

Content: What we know as the Ice Age, the last long period during which global temperatures dropped dramatically and the polar ice expanded to cover much of the earth, is more properly called the Last Glacial Period (as there have been multiple ice ages).

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It started around 115,000 years ago and lasted for over 100,000 years. In that time many animal lineages rose and fell. In particular, it is known that many large mammal species went extinct during the transition from the Ice Age to the present interglacial period (from around 50,000 to 5,000 years ago).

These extinctions are thought to have occurred due to a combination of a quickly changing climate, changing vegetation and increases in human hunting. These megafauna included some truly huge and charismatic animals, from the iconic woolly mammoth to huge cave bears, to giant sloths standing nearly 12 feet tall! In this list you will find out about some extraordinary (now extinct) animals that lived during the age of ice and snow.

10 now-extinct animals from the Ice Age

1. Neanderthals

Our own species, Homo sapiens, emerged about 300,000 years ago, so persisted through the last ice age. We were not the only ancient humans around, however. Surviving the frigid temperatures along with us were our evolutionary cousins, the Neanderthals. This species of hominid emerged at a similar time to us but went extinct around 40,000 years ago – during the Ice Age.

Theories as to why they went extinct vary, from outcompetion from or diseases introduced by Homo sapiens to assimilation into the human gene pool. However, recent theories suggest that the primary driver might have been climate change. It is thought that despite behavioural and biological adaptations to the cold they simply struggled to survive the frigid conditions and lack of available food. How we survived and they didn’t is an interesting question.

2. Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius)

Probably the most well-known of all Ice Age animals is the woolly mammoth (in part thanks to the film character Manny!). Woolly mammoths lived from about 300,000 years ago up until about 10,000 years ago. The appearance of these elephant-sized animals is perhaps the best known of any prehistoric creature, due to the many frozen specimens that have been found, with soft tissue preserved.

With their thick coat of hair, large fat reserves, and specially adapted 'antifreeze' blood they were very well adapted to the cold. They were also very important to the survival of ancient humans throughout the Ice Age; their coats, meat and bones provided valuable sources of warmth, food and building materials for homo sapiens and Neanderthals alike.

3. Giant ground sloth (Megatherium americanum)

These beasts were very different to the sloths we know and love today! Standing at a whopping 3.7m when up on hind legs and weighing up to four tonnes (as opposed to the 5kg of a modern sloth), they were truly colossal.

With its ability to walk on its hind legs, it was in fact the largest bipedal mammal of all time. They lived in the woodlands and grasslands of South America, and fossils have been found dating back from around 400,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago. Despite its huge fearsome claws, it was actually a vegetarian, feeding on leaves and grasses.

4. Cave bears (Ursus spelaeus)

Slightly more modest in size, though still pretty massive, was the cave bear. Weighing in at between 400 and 1,000kg, the largest cave bears were comparable in size to modern-day polar bears. They could be found across Europe and Asia, including in the UK.

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We have a very good idea of what they looked like, as in 2020 a perfectly preserved specimen was found in the Russian Arctic, its remains revealed by melting permafrost. Even its teeth and nose were intact.

The specimen was dated to between 22,000 and 39,500 years old, living towards the end of the time of the cave bears, who are thought to have gone extinct 24,000 years ago. It is thought that hunting by humans, as well as competition with them over caves, may have contributed to their disappearance.

5. Dire wolf (Canis dirus)

That’s right, dire wolves are not just fictional pets from Game of Thrones, they were real animals. However, despite the name, and a lot of physical similarities, recent genetic analysis has revealed that they were not actually very closely related to grey wolves at all and were relatively closer to African jackals.

These canids were seemingly a common feature of the American Late Pleistocene landscape (approx. 250,000 to 13,000 years ago), roaming the grasslands, plains, and woods and preying on megafauna including giant ground sloths. There is almost an overabundance of fossil data on this species, with over 4,000 individuals excavated from California’s La Brea tar pits alone.

6. Sabre Tooth Cat (Smilodon genus)

The La Brea tar pits have also been responsible for giving us insights about another iconic Ice Age predator – the sabre tooth cat. More than 3,000 fossilised individuals have been pulled from the ooze, and their teeth in particular have been a valuable source of information about their diets and lifestyle.

Scientists have been able to examine the wear patterns on their iconic gnashers to determine that rather than bringing down very large prey like bison on the open plains, as was previously thought, they most likely fed primarily on smaller forest-dwelling animals like tapirs and deer. They were ambush predators similar to many modern-day big cats.

7. Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus)

As you can probably guess from the scientific name, this species of deer was BIG. They stood at over 1.8m tall at shoulder height and had the largest antlers of any known deer, extinct or living. These colossal antlers must have been something to behold, spanning up to a whopping 3.5 metres.

Despite the name, this elk was not restricted to Ireland, but some of the most well-preserved fossil specimens have been found there. The most recent remains come from western Russia and have been dated to approximately 7,700 years ago – seemingly another victim of the megafaunal extinction event that occurred around the end of the Ice Age.

8. Giant Beaver (Castoroides genus)

Continuing the theme of larger versions of modern-day animals is the giant beaver, with an average length of about 1.8m. Its teeth were large to match, with some reaching up to 15cm, about the size of a hot dog.

There is no definitive evidence that they built dams as modern beavers do, but it is plausible that these immense incisors could have been used for woodcutting. What we do know is that they had smaller, smoother brains than modern-day beavers, which could indicate that they had less behavioural and social complexity.

9. Megalania (Varanus priscus)

So far this list has focused on mega-mammals, but what about other Ice Age species? Understandably it was hard for cold-blooded species like reptiles to survive frozen ice age temperatures across much of the globe, but in fact, not all of the world was icy, and some places remained habitable.

One of these places was Australia, where giant reptiles ruled. These included huge land-living crocodiles, massive snakes and Megalania – a truly monstrous relative of the Komodo dragon. This monitor lizard reached an estimated length of 7 metres and was a key land predator, at the very top of the food chain.

It has been suggested that the loss of its mega-reptile predators has left the Australian ecosystem out of kilter, allowing introduced mammals to reign unchecked.

10. Diprotodon (Diprotodon genus)

Another feature of the Australian Ice Age landscape was not a reptile, but a huge marsupial mammal – in fact, the largest marsupial to have ever lived. Diprotodon measured an estimated 4m head to tail tip and weighed as much as 3,500 kg, dwarfing the current largest marsupial, the red kangaroo, which checks in at a mere 2.7m and 90kg.

Their closest modern relatives are actually much smaller: wombats and koalas. It also has the distinction of being the only known seasonally migrating marsupial, trekking very far in search of food and watering holes.

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Main image: Artist's impression of a sabre tooth cat. © Daniel Eskridge/Getty

Authors

Leoma WilliamsAnimal behavior researcher and science writer

Leoma Williams is currently studying for a PhD at the University of Manchester, and writes periodically for both the website and print magazine

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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?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

In the case of woolly mammoths, archaeological evidence from sites like Siberia's Berelekh 'mammoth graveyard' suggests humans scavenged and hunted these animals, using their ivory for tools and their meat for sustenance.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?