Woolly mammoths largely disappeared near the end of the last Ice Age, with many populations gone around 10,000 years ago and the final relicts persisting until roughly 4,000 years ago.

Before their final disappearance, remnant groups were confined to Arctic islands off Siberia and Alaska, reflecting severe range contraction.

Postglacial climate warming transformed their habitats, reducing open grasslands and expanding forests and swampy vegetation that displaced their preferred forage.

Analyses of ancient DNA and permafrost sediments show that vegetation loss and rapid environmental change undermined mammoth populations leading up to extinction.

Rapid climate shifts outpaced the species’ ability to adapt, making survival increasingly difficult.

Some research emphasizes that climate change replaced snow‑covered steppe forage with marshy plants unsuitable for mammoths, highlighting warming as a major driver.

Alongside climate stress, humans hunted mammoths for meat and materials, adding pressure to declining populations.

Archaeological sites in Austria dated 30,000–40,000 years ago preserve mammoth bones and evidence that people used spears, tools, and possibly traps to take down these six‑ton, 10‑foot‑tall animals.

Neanderthal sites in Germany with 125,000‑year‑old elephant remains, cut marks, and tool evidence indicate organized hunts that targeted particular age and sex classes rather than scavenging.

A Siberian “mammoth graveyard” with remains of 156 individuals shows humans accumulated mammoth bones for ivory technology, with nearby settlements dated to 11.2–12.4 thousand years ago.

Synthesis of paleoecological and archaeological evidence indicates that a combination of climate change and human hunting best explains mammoth extinction, and some analyses suggest they might have survived without human pressure.

The timing and geography of decline were complex, with climate‑driven migrations and shifting ranges, and the last known population surviving on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago.

The loss of mammoths and other megafauna had cascading ecological effects, sharply reducing seed dispersal and the circulation of elements across landscapes.

Large animal extinctions cut nutrient transport by roughly 90%, leaving soils less fertile and ecosystems less productive.

The disappearance of big herbivores also increased wildfire risk because their grazing once reduced the grassy fuels that carry fires.

Plant communities and evolution were altered as the absence of large dispersers slowed the spread and diversification of some plants.

Overall, mammoth extinction illustrates how rapid climate change coupled with human pressures can drive species past a tipping point, offering lessons for modern conservation.

Today’s human‑driven warming has already raised average temperatures by about 1°C and is sufficient to delay the next ice age by ~100,000 years, underscoring the scale of human influence on climate and biodiversity.

Woolly mammoths largely disappeared near the end of the last Ice Age, with many populations gone around 10,000 years ago and the final relicts persisting until roughly 4,000 years ago.

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

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Colossal has challenged it to return woolly mammoths, a species extinct 4,000 years ago, to the Arctic using gene-editing techniques.
The company said in a statement that "Colossal will launch a practical and effective model of extinction restoration and will be the first company to apply advanced genetic modification techniques to bring woolly mammoths back to the polar tundra."
The principle of re-extinction is based on the re-creation of an extinct genus using genetic engineering, but it does not have consensus among scientists as it raises concerns among some researchers about the ability to carry it out or the risks associated with it.
Asian elephants and woolly mammoths share 6.99 percent of the same DNA, Colossal said on its website.
“Generating this type of hybrid elephant and then introducing it into the polar tundra would restore extinct ecosystems that could help halt or even reverse the consequences of climate change. ”
“Genetically modified woolly mammoths could especially bring life back to the polar prairies, ” she said, which could trap carbon dioxide and eliminate methane, two greenhouse gases.
The U.S. biotech company has raised $15 million in private funds to achieve this goal, which has raised skepticism among some experts.
Biologist Beth Shapiro explained in The New York Times that "various problems will arise along this path."
Tory Herridge, a biologist and paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, tweeted: "This is not a re-extinction.
Mammoth will never return to Earth.
If that works, we will have a superstitious elephant, an entirely new, artificial and genetically modified organism. ”
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When did the last population of wooly mammoth become extinct?

When did the last population of wooly mammoth become extinct?

When did the last population of wooly mammoth become extinct?

Before their final disappearance, remnant groups were confined to Arctic islands off Siberia and Alaska, reflecting severe range contraction.

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

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Megan ShersbyNaturalist, writer and content creator
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How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

Postglacial climate warming transformed their habitats, reducing open grasslands and expanding forests and swampy vegetation that displaced their preferred forage.

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.

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.
Only what is important to you is in the “Tape of the Day ” in Telegram.
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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?

food sources disappearing
pastures becoming swampy
restricted habitat
shrank grassland

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?

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

food sources disappearing
pastures becoming swampy
restricted habitat
shrank grassland

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?

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

food sources disappearing
pastures becoming swampy
restricted habitat
shrank grassland

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?

Analyses of ancient DNA and permafrost sediments show that vegetation loss and rapid environmental change undermined mammoth populations leading up to extinction.

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

food sources disappearing
restricted habitat
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Rapid climate shifts outpaced the species’ ability to adapt, making survival increasingly difficult.

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

Some research emphasizes that climate change replaced snow‑covered steppe forage with marshy plants unsuitable for mammoths, highlighting warming as a major driver.

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Content: Skip to main content

From time crystals to cannibal toads, 2021 was a wild year for science

2021 was full of innovation and discovery in the world of science, covering everything from biological discovery and archeology to not one but two burgeoning space races.

We learned some fascinating things about ancient animal species, including some surprising facts about dinosaurs, and we learned a lot about humanity as well.

Quantum computers jumped from the realm of practical technology to potentially physics defying breakthroughs while some of our most cherished scientific achievements started to show their age.

We broke the record for the coldest temperatures ever achieved and might have caught sight of our first exoplanet in another galaxy.

There was a lot going on this year, but we pulled out the major stories throughout the year that helped define the year in science for 2021.

January

We're not going to lie, January was tough, as several studies and reports showed just how quickly the climate crisis was advancing. One study showed that the triple-threat of climate change, biodiversity loss, and overpopulation could spell calamity for humanity by the end of this century.

Following up on that study, another showed that Earth is now hotter than its been in at least 120,000 years, seeming to settle a major conflict over climate models in favor of "Yeah, it really is that bad."

We also got some stunning photography of Mars' Valles Marineris, the single largest canyon in the solar system. The gash cuts across one side of Mars for thousands of miles and about 10 times longer and three times deeper than the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

February

Ok, February was Mars' month to really shine.

First, the United Arab Emirates also sent its first probe to Mars on February 9, a major milestone for a country that only launched its first satellite a decade ago.

Not to be outdone, China's first interplanetary spacecraft, the Tianwen-1 orbiter, arrived in orbit around the Red Planet the next day on February 10, beaming back spectacular video in the process.

The big show came a little over a week later when the NASA Perseverance rover successfully touched down on Mars in an ancient lake bed called Jezero Crater after "seven minutes of terror" as the rover's landing sequence played out via automated programming.

It went off flawlessly and Perseverance has been doing science on Mars ever since. Even better, Perseverance was able to send back the first audio ever recorded on another planet: a recording of the Martian wind blowing past the rover.

A little closer to home, NASA also chose SpaceX's Falcon Heavy to carry the first pieces of NASA's Gateway Station to the Moon's orbit, with an expected launch date sometime in 2024. NASA picking SpaceX for stuff is going to be a big theme for 2021, in case you're wondering.

March

Hubble had some trouble in March, suffering a software glitch that knocked it out of commission for several days. While in itself not terrible, it would end up foreshadowing more serious problems later in the year.

We also got a new digital recreation of the complete Antikythera Mechanism, a roughly 2,000-year-old device discovered in an ancient Roman shipwreck in 1900 and considered the world's first mechanical computer.

The mysterious device is missing many key parts and is covered in two millennia of corrosion and sediment buildup, so figuring out how the device actually worked is one of archeology's greatest ongoing challenges.

We do know some things about it though, like the fact that it charted the positions of the planets, predicted lunar eclipses, and even counted down to the next Olympic games in Athens.

April

April was a historic month on Mars, as the Ingenuity helicopter drone made its first test flight after arriving on the planet with the Perseverance rover back in February.

It was the first time a human aircraft ever flew on another world, making it something of a Wright Brothers moment for NASA engineers.

"I don't think I can ever stop watching it over and over again," Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung said afterward.

Back here on Earth, just a really long time ago, we learned something remarkable about every kid's favorite dinosaur: Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Looking at new simulations of how a T. rex's tail would have moved given what we know of its physiology, it turns out its typical walking speed was a sluggish 3 mph (5km/h)

Speed doesn't scale well with weight, so this shouldn't be surprising, but given how many other huge dinosaurs were around at the time, T. rex hunting prey might have been history's slowest chase scene. Considering that T. rex possibly numbered in the millions right up until 66 million years ago, it seems to have gotten along just fine. Until the asteroid hit anyway.

Finally, just before the end of the month, China put the first section of the Tianhe space station into orbit. Called the Tianhe core module, the module provides life support and living space for up to three crew members, and includes the necessary guidance and navigation controls for the station as more modules are added in the months ahead.

May

Following up on NASA's Perseverance, China landed its first rover, Zhurong, on Mars in May.

See more

The Mars landing is a historic feat for China, making it only the second country to put a rover on another planet, after the United States. This is a further sign of the brewing space race between the two countries that is expected to accelerate in the years ahead.

Zhurong is equipped with panoramic and multispectral cameras and equipment to analyze rock compositions, as well as ground penetrating radar to explore subsurface features of the Utopia Planitia region of the planet.

Looking out a little bit past Mars, scientists were able to watch and document a star being eaten by a black hole in a process known as spaghettification

This is where the tidal forces of the black holes gravity on the side of the star nearest it is so much greater than the gravity on the star's far side that the difference in gravity literally tears the star apart, turning it into a stream of material that eventually forms an accretion disk around the black hole as it slowly consumes the material.

We knew that this process happened, but this was the first time astronomers got to watch it happen to an actual star.

Finally, there was news in May that scientists have determined that the longest a human can ever live, biologically, is about 150 years. After that point, the body is simply no longer able to repair itself. So, it turns out humans do have a definite shelf life.

June

June saw some disturbing news on the climate front, as a satellite photos taken from 2017 to 2020 showed Antarctica's Pine Island Glacier – one of the continent's most endangered – dramatically losing up to 20% of its supporting ice shelf in just four years.

The consequences of this kind of rapid ice loss will be dire, as melting ice from collapsing glaciers and ice sheets contribute to catastrophic sea level rise.

While we're talking about Antarctica, the southern most continent on Earth now officially has its own ocean, the Southern Ocean

While the idea of the Southern Ocean isn't new, it wasn't officially listed alongside the four other recognized oceans: the Altantic, the Pacific, the Indian, and the Arctic.

June also saw more evidence emerge that a comet fragment impacted Earth 13,000 years ago and caused the Younger Dryas period, a 1,500 year stretch starting around 11,000 BCE where Earth's climate suddenly snapped back into ice age conditions just as the last ice age was coming to an end.

The comet fragment theory – or the Clovis comet impact hypothesis, as it is known – has been a controversial one over the years.

New research into a global layer of platinum and other deposits in the geological record right at the start of the Younger Dryas though are pointing more and more to an impact, providing crucial support for the theory.

More research needs to be done, but it's looking increasingly like humanity survived an apocalyptic impact event 13,000 years ago, and the subsequent impact winter might have forced hunter-gatherer societies to work the Earth to try and grow food as it became more scarce – essentially forcing human tribes to form civilization as we know it in response to the crisis.

July

There was a lot that happened in July, but arguably the most important story of the month was the Billionaire Space Race kicking into high gear.

Both Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos launched themselves into someone's definition of space, and we'll leave it to Bezos and Branson to pull out the measuring tape on that one and argue over where "outer space" actually begins.

Throw in half a year of Elon Musk's SpaceX launching a crewed mission to the International Space Station, several tests of SpaceX's Starship (many of which met a fiery end on a landing platform), and trash talk on Twitter, and one of the most obnoxious spectacles of the past decade spilled out into the open in July.

The saddest part about it all is that the future of space exploration is likely in their hands, and especially in the case of SpaceX, they are actually delivering results. So we're likely destined to have to put up with this for the foreseeable future as these companies become more integrated into our official space agencies in the US, Europe, and even in Russia.

Moving on from all that for now, there was also an exciting little tidbit of astronomy this August, with the discovery of a moon-forming disk around an exoplanet in a solar system in the earliest stages of its formation.

It was the first time we've ever seen anything like this, and it's a huge discovery for scientists researching solar system formation to actually see this process playing out.

As for the disk, it is surrounding an exoplanet that is about the size of Jupiter, and the disk itself is gargantuan, estimated to be about 500 times larger than the rings of Saturn, or comparable to the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

August

August was a huge month for quantum computing fans as Google announced that they had creating physics-breaking "time crystals", a quantum phenomenon that violates the principle of entropy laid out by the second law of thermodynamics.

The results have to be confirmed, and that isn't a simple task, obviously. No one just has a spare quantum computer lying around that researchers can use.

Still, if Google's Sycamore quantum computer has managed to create time crystals, all we can say is it's a big friggin' deal, and the implications of it still aren't clear even to physicists who do this for a living.

August also saw the announcement that researchers had identified the source of the dinosaur-killing asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago.

Examining samples from the Chicxulub crater, the asteroid was determined to be a carbonaceous chondrite, an ancient class of asteroid that originates on the darkest, outer edges of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

It's suspected that Jupiter's gravitational influence nudged the space rock into the inner solar system, and simulation models show that this happens more often than we originally suspected, with impacts with Earth occurring about once every 250 million years. So we've got time, yet.

While not the most ground-breaking event in science this year, it's still really cool that researchers spotted a metal-laden white dwarf rocketing against the rotation of the Milky Way at nearly 2 million mph (about 3.2 million km/h) like it was shot out of a cosmic cannon.

And in a lot of ways, it probably was. Astronomers suspect that the white dwarf was the companion to a star that went supernova, and the blast was so violent that the white dwarf remnant shooting through the galaxy has enough velocity to escape the Milky Way entirely and fly off into intergalactic space.

Oh, and if you thought you were done with the Jeff Bezos-Elon Musk fight over who gets dibs on outer space, you'd be wrong. By the middle of August, Jeff Bezos was suing NASA over its awarding SpaceX the Artemis lunar lander program, even though Bezos's Blue Origin bid was almost twice what SpaceX's bid was.

While this isn't really a fight between Musk and Bezos as much as it is a fight between Musk's SpaceX and the legacy military-industrial complex mainstays like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman, Bezos's lawsuit did manage to delay the Artemis mission and push it back to 2025 at the earliest.

September

Poisonous cane toads that even notoriously prickly Australian wildlife won't mess with have nothing to fear but themselves – literally.

The invasive cane toad, first introduced into Australia in the 1930s from South America as a pest control measure has spiraled out of control and now 200 million cane toads in Australia have made cannibalizing the young a key part of their development out of the tadpole stage, according to a recent study.

This in turn has made the cane toad hatchlings evolve to mature faster so that they can defend themselves against their older counterparts. This in turn is making the cane toads evolve to be even more ferocious in hunting down hatchlings to eat in a twisted evolutionary arms race.

"These toads have gotten to the point where their own worst enemy is themselves," the study author said.

We also saw new research in September that quantified the damage that a particularly strong solar flare could cause, and it's not good.

A powerful solar flare wouldn't harm any of us on the ground, not directly anyway. Earth's magnetic field protects us from any danger from the charged particles flying off the Sun during a solar flare event. But electronics? Yeah, they're toast.

The research revealed that there aren't enough redundancies in internet transmission capacity, particularly with undersea cables, which could be fried during a solar flare event and which could take months to replace.

Meanwhile, North America could be cut off from the rest of the world's internet until the cables were replaced, causing $7 billion dollars of economic damage a day while the internet remains out of commission.

In happier news, SpaceX's Inspiration4 mission, the first privately chartered space flight to orbit the Earth, helped raise tens of millions of dollars for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital, which treats pediatric cancers and other diseases.

Inspiration4 also gave us something new from SpaceX: a cupola on the Dragon Crew capsule. This domed window gave the crew members stunning views of the Earth as they orbited, making everyone else on Earth jealous as hell.

See more

October

We had a couple of choice bits in October as well. First, there was news that researchers in Germany broke the record for the coldest temperature ever achieved in a lab.

Using a special state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, made from 100,000 rubidium atoms held in place with magnetic fields and cooled to about 2 billionths of a degree Celsius, the researchers dropped the condensate from a 120-foot tall freefall tower while flipping the magnetic field off and on rapidly.

This dropped the temperature of the atoms to just 38 picokelvins, or about 38 trillions of a degree Kelvin above absolute zero, for roughly two seconds.

Speaking of cold, a comprehensive study of wooly mammoth fossils and other environmental samples collected over 20 years claims to prove that the mammoths weren't hunted to extinction, but rather died off because of climate change.

Coming out of the last ice age, mammoths were adapted to finding and eating a tough kind of plant life that can survive in snowy climates, but when the snows melted, those plants got pushed out by the marshy plant life of a tundra, which the mammoths apparently couldn't eat, or which at least didn't provide the proper nutrients.

Finally, we got word toward the end of October that we might have spotted our first exoplanet in another galaxy. Unfortunately, it appears to be orbiting far enough away from a black hole or neutron star that we won't be able to confirm it using the transit method for about 70 years.

November

In November, we learned that it's no use hiding from you cat, they know where you are at all times thanks to some special process that can link sound to location like pinning audio cues on a 2D mental map.

Even when they're not looking, they're still watching you, apparently.

We also got new evidence of a unique kind of fast radio burst, one whose source appears to be repeatedly exploding, as many as 1,652 times in a single 60 hour period of observation.

The researchers who spotted it are at a loss to describe what could be causing such an unusual, and rapid, pattern, but they have some guesses.

We saw more space debris make the news in November as well, as several incidents involving space debris threatening the International Space Station made the news, including an anti-satellite weapons test conducted by Russia that sent shrapnel from the satellite into the path of the ISS, forcing astronauts to enter their Dragon and Soyuz capsules as an emergency precaution.

December

Closing out the year, we had a new EP drop from Mathematician and electronic music artist Dr. Valery Vermeulen that used data from black hole collisions and black hole simulations to create sometimes-haunting soundscapes.

We interviewed Vermeulen and explored the overlap between art and science, how we can use unorthodox tools to make complex science more accessible to the masses, and why that ultimately matters.

On the opposite end of the spectrum from black holes, the Parker Solar Probe finally touched the Sun's outer layer this year.

The announcement in December was met with a lot of understandable fanfare and wonder, but the accomplishment will also better help us understand solar winds and other space weather produced by the Sun.

And we obviously can't close out the year without talking about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launch. The successor to Hubble, JWST will be the next-generation observation platform for astronomers for the next five to ten years, and probably longer.

The incredibly delicate deployment is still underway as you read this, but we're getting closer to having an entirely new eye on the universe that will let us see further back in time to the earliest galaxies and stars to ever have formed. Exciting stuff, assuming everything goes right.

Fingers crossed, otherwise that'll be a crappy way to kick off the year in science for 2022.

John (He / Him / His) is TechRadar's Computing Staff Writer and is also a programmer, gamer, activist, and Brooklyn College alum currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Named by the CTA as a CES 2020 Media Trailblazer for his science and technology reporting, John specializes in all areas of computer science, including industry news, hardware reviews, PC gaming, as well as general science writing and the social impact of the tech industry.

You can find him online on Twitter at @thisdotjohn

Currently playing: Back 4 Blood, Metroid Dread, EVE Online

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

food sources disappearing
pastures becoming swampy
restricted habitat
shrank grassland

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?

Alongside climate stress, humans hunted mammoths for meat and materials, adding pressure to declining populations.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Archaeological sites in Austria dated 30,000–40,000 years ago preserve mammoth bones and evidence that people used spears, tools, and possibly traps to take down these six‑ton, 10‑foot‑tall animals.

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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?

from 300,000 years ago up until 10,000 years ago

Neanderthal sites in Germany with 125,000‑year‑old elephant remains, cut marks, and tool evidence indicate organized hunts that targeted particular age and sex classes rather than scavenging.

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Pit find in Germany reveals how Neanderthals hunted huge elephants

125,000-year-old bones of 70 animals – each about three times the size of today’s Asian elephants – discovered near Halle

Neanderthals may have lived in larger groups than previously believed, hunting massive elephants that were up to three times bigger than those of today, according to a new study.

The researchers reached their conclusions, published in the journal Science Advances on Wednesday, based on examinations of the 125,000-year-old skeletal remains of straight-tusked elephants found near Halle in central Germany.

The bones of about 70 elephants from the Pleistocene era were discovered in the 1980s in a huge coal quarry that has since been converted into an artificial lake.

Elephants of the time were much larger than the woolly mammoth and three times the size of the present-day Asian elephant: an adult male could weigh up to 13 tonnes.

“Hunting these giant animals and completely butchering them was part of Neanderthal subsistence activities at this location,” Wil Roebroeks, a co-author of the study, told AFP.

“This constitutes the first clearcut evidence of elephant-hunting in human evolution,” said Roebroeks, a professor of archeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The study suggests that the Neanderthals who lived in the area for 2,000 to 4,000 years were less mobile and formed social units “substantially larger than commonly envisaged”.

“Neanderthals were not simple slaves of nature, original hippies living off the land,” Roebroeks said.

“They were actually shaping their environment, by fire … and also by having a big impact on the biggest animals that were around in the world at that time.”

The researchers determined the elephants had been hunted – and not just scavenged – because of the age and sex profile of the remains found in the quarry.

Most of them were males and there were few young or old ones.

“It’s a typical selection made by hunters who went for the biggest prey,” Roebroeks said.

Adult male elephants would have been easier to hunt than females, who tend to move in herds protecting their young. “Whereas adult males are solitary animals most of the time,” Roebroeks said. “So they are easier to immobilise, driving them into mud and pit traps.

“And they are the biggest calorie bombs that are walking around in these landscapes.”

The researchers said the Neanderthals were able to preserve the huge quantities of food provided by a single elephant and it would sustain them for months.

“An average male elephant of about 10 tonnes would have yielded something like, minimally, 2,500 daily portions for an adult Neanderthal,” Roebroeks said.

“They could deal with it, either by preserving it for longer time periods – that is already something that we didn’t know – or simply by the fact that they lived in much, much larger groups than we commonly infer.”

The researchers said the Neanderthals butchered the animals with flint tools, which left clear traces on the well-preserved bones.

“They are classical cut marks that are generated by cutting and scraping off the meat from the bones,” Roebroeks said.

Traces of charcoal fires used by the Neanderthals were also found, suggesting they may have dried meat by hanging it on racks and building a fire underneath.

Roebroeks said that while the study provides evidence the Neanderthals lived in large social units, it is difficult to estimate exactly how large those groups actually were.

“But if you have a 10-tonne elephant and you want to process that animal before it becomes rotten, you need something like 20 people to finish it in a week,” he said.

More on this story

More on this story

  • Jawbone found in Spain could be oldest European human fossil

  • Neanderthals helped create early human art, researcher says

  • End of Neanderthals linked to flip of Earth's magnetic poles, study suggests

  • Early humans may have survived the harsh winters by hibernating

  • The Guardian view on Amazonian cave art: a story about the environment, too

  • Meave Leakey: 'Definitely, Africa is where it all began'

  • Arctic review – stark eco warnings from the ice-braving hunters who battled whales

  • Neanderthal genes increase risk of serious Covid-19, study claims

  • Science Weekly
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  • Humans and Neanderthals 'co-existed in Europe for far longer than thought'

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Title:

Content: rus
� � � � � � � �
Science
Archaeologists have found the remains of 125,000 years old erect elephants in Germany, which were three times larger than modern ones.
Tsikhotskaya Maria
New research has shown that Neanderthals had the ability to form large groups and hunt huge elephants that were three times larger than modern ones.
These conclusions were made on the basis of the study of skeletal remains of erect forest elephants found in Germany near Halle.
This is reported by The Guardian.
The researchers found the bones of about 70 animals that lived about 125,000 years ago during the Pleistocene period.
The finds were discovered in a large coal quarry that has now turned into an artificial lake in the 1980s.
Adults of these ancient animals were much larger than woolly mammoths and weighed up to 13 tons, which is three times the weight of modern Indian elephants.
One of the co-authors of the study, Professor of Archaeology from Leiden University in the Netherlands, Wil Rebrux, noted that hunting these giant animals was vital for the survival of Neanderthals in the area.
This gave the first clear idea of how Neanderthals provided food, as well as the first unknown evidence of elephant hunting in human evolution.
The study also indicates that Neanderthals, who lived in the area for 2,000 to 4,000 years, formed social groups much larger than previously thought and were less mobile.
Based on new research, it is revealed that the ancient Neanderthals actively influenced their environment through the use of fire and had a significant impact on the largest animals that existed at the time.
The researchers concluded that Neanderthals hunted for elephants, rather than just collecting food remains, this is confirmed by analysis of age and sex characteristics of the bones found.
It turned out that most of them belonged to males, usually young or old.
It seems to scientists that this was a typical choice of hunters hunting the largest prey.
Adult males were easier to hunt than females, usually moving in herds, protecting their offspring.
They spend most of their time alone, so they are easier to catch by driving them into a swamp or trap.
These huge elephants were a very high-calorie food that was common in these areas.
The food from the elephant was enough for Neanderthals for several months.
Neanderthals may have stored food for longer periods, which was not previously known, or they lived in much larger groups than previously thought.
See also: In Spain, found an ancient stone penis, had a “violent purpose ” (photo)
Scientists say that Neanderthals hunted animals using flint tools that left clear traces on well-preserved bones.
These marks are typical of cuts that occur when cutting and scraping meat from the bones.
In addition, traces of fires, namely charcoal, were found.
This may indicate that ancient people could have dried the meat by hanging it on racks and making a fire under them.
Recall, scientists learned that the Maya had a very high level of dentistry, available even to the poor.
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A Siberian “mammoth graveyard” with remains of 156 individuals shows humans accumulated mammoth bones for ivory technology, with nearby settlements dated to 11.2–12.4 thousand years ago.

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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

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Citation: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with woolly beasts (2024, June 10) retrieved 10 June 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-06-siberia-mammoth-graveyard-reveals-year.html
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from 300,000 years ago up until 10,000 years ago

Synthesis of paleoecological and archaeological evidence indicates that a combination of climate change and human hunting best explains mammoth extinction, and some analyses suggest they might have survived without human pressure.

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Content: How would the earth be different if modern man did not exist?
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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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The timing and geography of decline were complex, with climate‑driven migrations and shifting ranges, and the last known population surviving on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago.

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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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?

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

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?

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 loss of mammoths and other megafauna had cascading ecological effects, sharply reducing seed dispersal and the circulation of elements across landscapes.

Title:

Content: Science 2021-11-11T12: 03: 35 + 02: 00
Ukrainian News
Giant armadillos and mammoths.
Scientists have told what the Earth would look like if there were no people on it.
Giant armadillos and mammoths.
Scientists have told what the Earth would look like if there were no people on it.
This is what a glyptodon might look like, an armadillo-like creature that went extinct during the Ice Age.
Photo by Stocktrek Images
Man has greatly changed the landscape of planet Earth since the time of the development of tools.
And the more active the progress, the faster a person changes the face of the world around.
But if there were no humans on the planet, then there would be giant animals that are now extinct.
This conclusion was made by scientists, writes the publication Live science.
The land would belong to giant plants and animals.
Along with megafauna, Neanderthals, the distant ancestors of man, would also live.
Animals would be bigger.
For example, moa birds, similar to ostriches, would still live in New Zealand.
After humans came to the islands, the birds became extinct in 200 years.
According to Seren Faurbi of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, for thousands of years, humans have played a crucial role in the extinction of many giant animals.
Without us, today ’ s Earth would in many ways resemble an African ecosystem teeming with life.
Thus, the animal world of Europe would resemble Africa with its elephants, lions and rhinos.
But instead of African lions, cave lions would live - they are larger.
And in Africa, there would be giant bears and animals similar to armadillos, but the size of a car.
Scientists are still arguing about what led to the extinction of mammoths.
This could be both climate change and human activity.
Christopher Doughty of the University of Northern Arizona studied how representatives of megafauna contributed to the distribution of seeds.
He believes that with the extinction of large animals, the redistribution of elements such as phosphorus, calcium and magnesium decreased by 90%.
Without humans, these elements would have been more evenly distributed, he said, leading to a more productive system.
Without humans, the climate would be different.
But what exactly – scientists can not say exactly.
As reported by Ukrainian News, in Tanzania found the bones of a previously unknown species of titanosaur with a unique coccyx in the shape of a heart.
The deposits in which the bones were found are dated to 100-110 million years old.
On the British Isle of Wight, archaeologists have found two new species of dinosaurs that were predators of large size.
In size, the fossil lizards were no less than a bus and hunted both on land and in water.
They had crocodile-like snouts, sharp teeth, and a whip-like tail.
In addition, scientists have discovered a small crab that was stuck in wood tar 100 million years ago, so perfectly preserved.
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Large animal extinctions cut nutrient transport by roughly 90%, leaving soils less fertile and ecosystems less productive.

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.

The disappearance of big herbivores also increased wildfire risk because their grazing once reduced the grassy fuels that carry fires.

Title:

Content: Scientists link the extinction of large herbivores to wildfires
US researchers have revealed a link between the extinction of large herbivores that disappeared thousands of years ago and a change in the map of forest fires in different regions of the world.
Climate scientists have linked recent bushfires to climate change, but they are seeking a new and additional explanation for the fires going back to the distant past.
Weed Fuels Forest Fires
The study, published in the journal Science on November 26, showed that grass was the fuel for forest fires, and that large herbivores were eating large quantities of them, which reduces the chances of fires igniting and also limits the speed of spread.
Between 6,000 and 50,000 years ago, the world witnessed the extinction of a large number of large grass-fed animal species, a period after which there was a significant increase in forest fires.
Study co-author Alison Karp of the Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University said in a press release that they found wildfires were widespread in places with the highest number of extinctions.
The researchers conducted their study in collaboration with the Utah Museum of Natural History, which provided them with a list of large mammals that lived in the past in various regions of the world and were extinct, and compared the period of their extinction to the emergence of forest fires, in about 410 areas.
The researchers found that South America lost the largest number of herbivores at 83 percent, followed by North America at 68 percent, so wildfires were widespread, unlike Africa and Australia, which did not have a large prevalence of wildfires because extinction was not widespread.
Pastoralism and forest fire control
One of the findings of this study is the importance of grazing in fighting forest fires and reducing their rapid spread, concluding that the consumption by wild and pastoral animals of the land grasses that make up the fire fuel is itself putting an end to the spread of forest fires and reducing their speed.
Lead researcher Carla Steffer of Yale University ’ s Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology said: “This work clearly highlights the importance of the presence of herbivores in reducing or mitigating the spread of wildfires, as well as adapting to climate change, as this phenomenon is currently the main cause of the spread of wildfires. ”
The researcher added that it is better to take this issue into account in all forest fire control operations, "We must pay attention to the role that herbivores can play in all forest fire prediction and control processes."
Source: Websites
About this story
A new scientific report released in partnership with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has revealed that the relationship between humans and wild animals is unjust and that humans continue to pose a constant threat to these animals.
Published On 20 / 7 / 2021
Although there are long-lived wild animals, none of them are among the longest-lived in general, and all true longevity heroes live in the water.
You know the first 10 of them.
Published On 19 / 8 / 2021
Climate change affects not only humans, but also animals and birds by changing the shape of their excess ears, beaks and legs, a recent study showed, after reviewing museum records and comparing them to current conditions.
Published On 15 / 9 / 2021
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Plant communities and evolution were altered as the absence of large dispersers slowed the spread and diversification of some plants.

Title:

Content: How the extinction of dinosaurs affected plant development | Climate change | DW | 04.05.2022
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Environment and climate
This is how the extinction of dinosaurs affected the evolution of plants.
According to a recent scientific study, the extinction of dinosaurs, especially herbivores, significantly affected the evolution of the world of plants to become the way it is today.
So how did that happen?
And how did plants with large fruits come to their present form?
The study confirmed that the "evolutionary speed" at which new palm species with small fruits sprang up in the absence of large herbivores was reduced.
With the extinction of large non-flying dinosaurs 66 million years ago, massive herbivores disappeared on Earth for 25 million years later.
Since plants and herbivores affect each other, the question arises as to whether and how this very long absence and subsequent return of the so-called "herbivores" had any bearing on the evolution of the plant world.
To answer this question, a research team of scientists at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research iDiv and the University of Leipzig analyzed fossils and a number of living plants to date, including some palm species.
Genetic analyses have enabled researchers to track plant developments during and after the absence of giant carnivores.
Scientists first confirmed the popular scientific assumption that many palm species in the time of the dinosaurs carried large fruits and were covered with thorns as well as thorns on the stems and leaves as well.
However, the research team found that the "evolutionary speed" at which new palm species with small fruits arose in the absence of large herbivores decreased, while the evolutionary speed of those plants with large fruits remained almost constant, and the size of the fruits themselves increased.
Scientists say this is why there were palms that produced large fruits even after the extinction of the dinosaurs.
The research team published the results of the study in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
watch video 02: 14
Do birds live among us that have lived with dinosaurs?
Apparently, the young animals could also eat large fruits and spread the seeds of those plants with their secretions, "so we were able to disprove the previous scientific assumption that the presence and spread of large palm fruits depends exclusively on the presence of large animals that feed on them," says lead author of the study, Dr. Rinske Unstein of the University of Idif and the University of Leipzig. Large plants have increased the density of plants with large seeds by gaining an evolutionary advantage, "according to Vision.org.
However, the defensive features of the plants showed that the spread of spines on the leaves and stems had a different effect, as the number of palm species with defensive features decreased during the period of absence of large herbivores.
Unstein, who heads iDiv ’ s emerging research group Evolution and Adaptation, says: “Self-defense traits without animals eating the fruits and leaves of these plants no longer seem to offer evolutionary advantages to the organisms, however, most palm species reappeared when new meat-eaters evolved, in contrast to longer lasting fruit changes. ”
READ ALSO: Mystery of a 66-million-year-old stone egg solved
Through their work, the researchers shed new light on evolution and adaptation during one of the most mysterious and unique periods in the history of plant evolution, during and after the extinction of megafauna.
Understanding how the extinction of megafauna affected plant evolution in the past could also help predict future environmental developments, scientists say.
For example, the team observed the loss of important processes during the absence of megafauna, such as the dispersal and distribution of plant seeds and the disappearance of large herbivores, which had a very negative impact on the planet's ecosystem.
The ongoing extinction of large animals due to hunting and climate change may also affect traits in plant communities and ecosystems, both now and for the foreseeable future, as in earlier times.
Emad Hassan

Overall, mammoth extinction illustrates how rapid climate change coupled with human pressures can drive species past a tipping point, offering lessons for modern conservation.

Title:

Content: Scientists fear a repeat of an ancient fire that wiped out entire species
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Over the past decade, deadly wildfires have become increasingly common due to human-induced climate change and disruptive land management practices.
Southern California experienced a wave of wildfires 13,000 years ago.
These fires have permanently changed vegetation in the region and contributed to the largest extinction on Earth in more than 60 million years.
A team of researchers has a unique perspective on the causes and long-term consequences of environmental changes, both those associated with natural climate variability and those caused by humans.
In a new study published in August 2023, researchers sought to understand the changes that occurred in California during the last major extinction event at the end of the ice age.
The event wiped out most of the large mammals on Earth about 10,000 to 50,000 years ago, as dramatic climatic disturbances spread.
Scientists often call the past 66 million years of Earth's history the Age of Mammals.
During that time, some organisms exploited the extinction of dinosaurs to become the dominant species on the planet.
During the Ice Age, Eurasia and the Americas were teeming with enormous beasts such as woolly mammoth, giant bears, and terrible wolves.
Two camels, three species of ground sloths and five species of big cats roamed what is now Los Angeles.
And then suddenly she went away.
Around the world, the large mammals that characterized global ecosystems have disappeared for tens of millions of years.
North America has lost more than 70% of mammals weighing more than 97 pounds (44 kg).
South America lost more than 80%, and Australia lost almost 90%.
Africa, Antarctica and a few remote islands hold what can be considered “normal ” animal communities today.
The cause of these extinctions remains unclear.
For decades, paleontologists and archaeologists have debated possible causes.
With the end of the last ice age, the warming of the climate changed weather patterns and reorganized plant communities.
At the same time, the population was growing rapidly and spreading all over the world.
Either or both of these processes could be involved in the extinction event.
But the fossil record of any region is usually so rare that it is not known exactly when large mammal species from different regions disappeared.
This makes it difficult to determine whether habitat loss, resource scarcity, natural disasters, human hunting, or a combination of these factors is the cause.
Some records provide evidence.
La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, the richest ice age fossil site in the world, preserves the bones of thousands of large mammals that have been trapped in sticky asphalt spills for the past 60,000 years.
The proteins in these bones can be accurately dated using radiocarbon, giving scientists unprecedented insight into the ancient ecosystem and a chance to shed light on when – and why – it collapsed.
A recent study of La Brea Tar Pits and nearby Lake Elsinore uncovered evidence of a tragic event 13,000 years ago that permanently altered southern California ’ s vegetation and caused the disappearance of La Brea ’ s famous mega-mammals.
Sediment archives from the bottom of the lake and archaeological records provide evidence of a deadly combination — a warm climate punctuated by decades of drought and a rapidly growing population.
These factors have pushed the Southern California ecosystem to a turning point.
The catalyst for this dramatic shift seems to have been the unprecedented increase in wildfires, possibly caused by humans.
The processes that led to this collapse are familiar today.
As California warmed up after emerging from the last ice age, the landscape became drier and forests receded.
In La Brea, herbivores have declined, possibly due to a combination of human hunting and habitat loss.
In the millennium before the extinction, average annual temperatures in the region rose by 5.5 degrees Celsius, and the lake began to evaporate.
Then, 13,200 years ago, the ecosystem went into a 200-year drought.
Half of the remaining trees were lost.
With fewer large herbivores eating them, dead plants accumulated on the landscape.
Humans and our ancestors have used fire for hundreds of thousands of years, but fire has different effects on different ecosystems.
Coal records from Lake Elsinore reveal that before humans, fire activity was low on the southern coast of California.
But from 13,200 to 13,000 years ago, as the population grew, fires in the region increased in order of magnitude.
The research suggests that the combination of heat, drought, loss of herbivores and human fires has pushed this system to a tipping point.
At the end of this period, Southern California was covered with plants that thrive after the fires.
A new fire system was created, and the huge animals disappeared.
Lessons for the future
Studying the causes and consequences of Pleistocene extinctions in California can provide a valuable context for understanding today ’ s climate and biodiversity crises.
A similar combination of climate warming and population expansion, biodiversity loss and human-ignited fires that marked the receding ice age in Southern California is once again emerging today.
The worrying difference is that temperatures today are rising 10 times faster than they were at the end of the ice age, mainly due to the burning of fossil fuels.
This human-caused climate change has contributed to a fivefold increase in the frequency, intensity and area burned in California in the past 45 years.
While California is now famous for severe fires, the study reveals that fire is a relatively new phenomenon in this region.
In the 20,000 years leading up to the extinction, the Lake Elsinore record showed a drastic reduction in the incidence of any fire even during similar droughts.
It is only after the arrival of man that fire becomes a regular part of the ecosystem.
Even today, collapsed power lines, campfires and other human activities have caused more than 90% of wildfires on the California coast.
The similarities between the massive extinctions of the Pleistocene and the current ecological crises are striking.
The past teaches us that the ecosystems we depend on are prone to collapse when subjected to multiple intersecting pressures.
Redoubling efforts to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, prevent reckless fires and preserve the massive organisms remaining on Earth could help avoid another, more catastrophic transformation.
The report was prepared by Lisa N. Martinez, PhD candidate in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Regan E. Dunne, Assistant Professor of Earth Sciences from the School of Arts, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California, Duransev.
Source: Science Alert
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