Woolly mammoths went extinct around 10,000 years ago due to climate change and human hunting.

Climate change and human hunting contributed to the decline of woolly mammoths.

The woolly mammoths' extinction significantly impacted the ecosystem, causing increased grassland fires and a nearly 90% decrease in nutrient movement.

Human activity, such as hunting and habitat destruction, significantly impacted prehistoric ecosystems, contributing to the extinction of large mammals like woolly mammoths.

Studying the woolly mammoths' extinction informs strategies for combating climate change by providing ecosystem insights.

The potential restoration of woolly mammoths through genetic engineering is a controversial topic, with arguments for and against its impact on biodiversity and ethics.

Restoring ecosystems and conserving species requires understanding the interactions between human activity, climate change, and ecosystem processes.

Ancient DNA analysis and genetic engineering can provide insights into the ecology and conservation of extinct species like woolly mammoths.

The woolly mammoths' extinction highlights the impact of human activity on prehistoric ecosystems and offers valuable lessons for conservation efforts.

The loss of megafauna like woolly mammoths has had a lasting environmental impact, informing the need for conservation efforts to prevent further extinctions.

Preserving permafrost, which stores genetic data like woolly mammoth remains, is crucial for understanding human impacts on prehistoric ecosystems.

DNA analysis from Arctic locations and modern species has provided insights into woolly mammoth extinction and climate change impacts.

Climate change, hunting, and environmental factors led to the extinction of woolly mammoths and other megafauna.

Studying the woolly mammoths' extinction highlights the need for sustainable conservation and management of ecosystems.

Woolly mammoths went extinct around 10,000 years ago due to climate change and human hunting.

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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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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

When did the wooly mammoth mostly become extinct?

Climate change and human hunting contributed to the decline of woolly mammoths.

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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

The woolly mammoths' extinction significantly impacted the ecosystem, causing increased grassland fires and a nearly 90% decrease in nutrient movement.

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.

Human activity, such as hunting and habitat destruction, significantly impacted prehistoric ecosystems, contributing to the extinction of large mammals like woolly mammoths.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Studying the woolly mammoths' extinction informs strategies for combating climate change by providing ecosystem insights.

Title:

Content: Skip to content
The Future

A zoologist explains why the project to resurrect the wooly mammoth should go extinct

De-extinction, if it is ever possible, will not be simple.
Key Takeaways
  • Over the past couple of decades, a handful of de-extinction projects have explored the potential of "resurrecting" the wooly mammoth.
  • The term is a bit misleading: Rather than resurrecting an extinct species, the process would essentially modify the genome of an existing species in order to give it traits an extinct species once possessed.
  • The British zoologist Matthew Cobb argues that the primary focus of conservation efforts needs to be on the prevention of species loss, not on de-extinction.

Excerpted from As Gods: A Moral History of the Genetic Age by Matthew Cobb. Copyright © 2022. Available from Basic Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

The most truly god-like ability provided by genetic engineering is the apparent possibility of resurrecting extinct species – ‘de-extinction’. The most attention-grabbing proposal, which has been around for over a decade, is the idea of recreating the woolly mammoth, using our knowledge of the mammoth genome, obtained from tissue frozen in the tundra. It is claimed that de-extincting mammoths and other large tundra-dwelling mammals would not only enable us to encounter fantastic beasts but would also help mitigate some of the effects of climate change – as these creatures trampled and disturbed the ground, they would supposedly allow the winter frost to penetrate deeper, keeping carbon trapped for longer.

Leaving aside the obvious lessons of Jurassic Park, the technical issues involved in recreating a mammoth appear insurmountable. It would require taking the genome of the mammoth’s closest living relative – an Asian elephant – and introducing all the relevant changes (synthesising a whole chromosome is an incredibly arduous process and has not yet been performed in an animal; a woolly mammoth had twenty-nine pairs of chromosomes). These two species split between 2.5 and 5 million years ago; there are millions of base pairs that differ between them. Not all of those differences are significant, and we do not know which are the ones that count, but it is technically possible that all the relevant differences could be identified and then introduced into the elephant genome (the Asian elephant has one fewer pair of chromosomes than a mammoth, so the whole process might prove problematic).

Assuming these difficulties can be overcome, the modified chromosomes would then have to be introduced into an elephant cell and safely interact there with all of the cell’s organelles and molecules. But this cellular environment would be different in so many unknown ways to the cells that the mammoth genome co-evolved with that there is no guarantee that this would work. As an indication of the challenge involved, it took Venter’s group twenty years to master this procedure in a bacterial cell, which has only one chromosome and does not have a nucleus or any of the complex structures found in eukaryotes such as elephants and mammoths and does not develop into a large, hairy, intelligent animal.

Even if all this went smoothly, the resultant embryo would have to be implanted into a surrogate – again, an Asian elephant would be best – and the myriad interactions between embryo and mother would have to function appropriately for months and not kill either or both. This is much trickier than you might think – a few years ago a Spanish-led team of researchers tried to clone an extinct subspecies of Pyrenean ibex; hundreds of embryos were created and implanted in a series of surrogate mothers of the same species, but only one animal was born and she died a few minutes after birth. Things could so easily go awry using a surrogate from a different species.

Perhaps for this reason, one version of the project involves artificial wombs (these are currently hypothetical), like those in Brave New World, but which would presumably have to be the size of a small car. Finally, mammoths were not simply bags of cells and DNA, but complex social animals that lived in an environment that has now disappeared along with the cultural aspects of their social organisation. Even if every one of those unbelievably complex steps could be overcome, there would be profound ethical questions about the well-being of these extraordinary animals in the alien world in which they would find themselves.

As a result of these very real problems, the woolly mammoth de-extinction scheme, initially the brainchild of George Church, has recently become less mammoth in scope. The current version of the project, partly funded by Revive & Restore (R&R), a US foundation co-founded by Stewart Brand, focuses on identifying those alleles that adapted the mammoth to cold temperatures, with the dream of maybe some day creating an elephant with enough mammothy characteristics to enable it to live in northern climes. By 2022, a biotech start-up co-founded by Church called Colossal Biosciences had raised $75 million* to try to create a ‘cold-resistant elephant’, which it was claimed would be ‘functionally equivalent’ to a mammoth. So not a mammoth.

All these nuances were lost in the inevitable media excitement at the Colossal announcement, which yet again led to headlines about de-extincting mammoths (these have recurred every few years). Tori Herridge, a mammoth expert at the Natural History Museum in London, was invited to be involved but declined. She explained why in a thoughtful article in Nature:

Colossal has committed to ‘radical’ transparency, inclusion and community engagement, but has the chance to set the bar even higher, by empowering the public as part of its de-extinction journey. … The ethical road to de-extinction has to include informed citizen voices, alongside experts and activists. This might mean that the process takes longer than five years, but private enterprises working for the common good shouldn’t shy away from the views of those they seek to serve. Let the people decide the future world they want to build.

As evolutionary biologist and R&R board member Beth Shapiro explains in her best-selling if somewhat misleadingly titled How to Clone a Mammoth, it is extremely unlikely that we will ever truly recreate any extinct species, not only because it is technically extremely difficult, but also because the ecological relationships that made up their world have all been lost. In that respect, extinction is indeed forever.

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Even more disturbing and god-like are the semi-serious, profoundly problematic proposals involving the recreation of Neanderthals – extinct humans who lived in Europe, Asia and the Middle East before us. Leaving aside some absurd internet fantasists, no scientist is actually considering such an experiment – cloning a Neanderthal and implanting the embryo in a surrogate human mother would be nauseatingly unethical on every level. However, researchers have studied the function of Neanderthal genes in human brain organoids – lentil-size blobs of tissue that can be grown in the laboratory from stem cells. A Neanderthal allele in a gene that plays a role in neural development and function altered the organisation and activity of otherwise human tissue. Brain organoid research is slightly creepy (they spontaneously grow eye-like structures that respond to light) as well as being a potential ethical minefield (could such a structure become even dimly conscious? How would we know?), but the researchers involved claim that this kind of study might shed light on how the functions of some of our genes may have differed in our close relatives.

Despite all the substantial technical and ethical issues relating to de-extinction, in 2014 the International Union for the Conservation of Nature set up a De-extinction Task Force which produced a set of guiding principles outlining the kind of detailed ecological and financial risk assessments that would be necessary before genetic engineering was applied to endangered or extinct species. In 2019, a subgroup of the Task Force published a positive exploration of the potential impact of genetic technology on conservation. At around the same time, ecologists from the University of California Santa Barbara and Imperial College took a far more cautious view, arguing that any de-extinction program should focus on recently extinct species (their ecology would be more likely to be intact) that could be restored in sufficient numbers to enable the recreation of their lost ecological function. That would rule out the mammoth, or a mammothified elephant.

What looks like a spiffy technofix might provoke excitement and attract funding from the public or mega-rich celebrities but is unlikely to be a solution to extinction for any but a tiny handful of cases. If molecular biology really must be employed, then scientists should try cloning dead members of an endangered species to increase genetic diversity, as has been done in the case of the US black-footed ferret, with funding from the R&R foundation. In 2022, an attempt to recover the genome of the extinct Christmas Island rat, using different extant rat genomes as models, showed that it was impossible to recover around 5 per cent of the genome, with over twenty genes being completely absent. Key genes involved in the sense of smell and the immune system were particularly affected.

De-extinction, if it is ever possible, will not be simple. The primary focus of conservation efforts needs to be on the prevention of species loss, not on de-extinction. In the vast majority of cases, that will involve basic work to prevent habitat degradation and to keep humans away from the endangered organisms. That might be less sexy, but it is a lot more sensible.

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The potential restoration of woolly mammoths through genetic engineering is a controversial topic, with arguments for and against its impact on biodiversity and ethics.

Restoring ecosystems and conserving species requires understanding the interactions between human activity, climate change, and ecosystem processes.

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Content: Saturday 12 November 1443 AH - 11 June 2022 |
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A study has identified that the loss of megafauna in grazing land 50,000 years ago has led to a dramatic increase in grassland fires worldwide.
These large herbivores, which included the iconic woolly mammoth, giant bison and ancient horses, are believed to have become extinct as the climate warms.
However, the experts who led the study from Yale University showed that their loss had conclusive effects, with herbs they no longer ingested to provide fuel for wildfires.
The team added that their findings highlight the need to consider the role of herbivores when predicting current and future global fire activity.
The research was conducted by ancient ecologist Alison Karp of Yale University, Connecticut, and her colleagues.
“These extinctions led to a series of consequences, ” Dr. Karp said, among them, she explained, the collapse of predators and the loss of fruit trees that relied on large herbivores to disperse their seeds.
“Studying these effects helps us understand how herbivores shape the global environment today. ”
The researchers wondered whether the loss of giant herbivores would likely lead to the accumulation of dry grass, leaves and wood, which would lead to an increase in fire activity.
In their study, experts compiled a large list of now lost mammals and approximate dates on which they became extinct across four continents.
Their analysis indicated that South America lost the largest grazing species (83 per cent of all species), followed by North America (68 per cent), Australia (44 per cent) and Africa (22 per cent).
The team then compared this data to records of past wildfire activity as recorded by the presence of coal in lake sediments from 410 locations around the world.
Not only did this reveal wildfire activity increase following the extinction of megafauna, but the Americas, which lost more grazing, saw greater increases in fire levels than in Australia and Africa, where changes were less.
According to Dr. Karp and her colleagues, pastures have changed around the world due to the loss of herbivores, the resulting fires and the loss of grasses eaten by grazing.
It took some time for new livestock breeders, including cattle, to adapt to new ecosystems.
However, the loss of large animal species, such as mastodons, giant sloths and Diprotodons in Australia, which all feed on shrubs and trees, has not been found to be associated with a similar increase in wildfires.
The team said the findings show how we should think about the role of wildlife and livestock herders in mitigating wildfires, especially given climate change.
Study author and ecologist Carla Staffer, also from Yale University, said: “This work really highlights how important grazing is in shaping fire activity. ”
"We need to pay close attention to these interactions if we are to accurately predict the future of fires."

Ancient DNA analysis and genetic engineering can provide insights into the ecology and conservation of extinct species like woolly mammoths.

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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The loss of megafauna like woolly mammoths has had a lasting environmental impact, informing the need for conservation efforts to prevent further extinctions.

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Content: How would the earth be different if modern man did not exist?
The Libyan Observatory Newspaper
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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

Preserving permafrost, which stores genetic data like woolly mammoth remains, is crucial for understanding human impacts on prehistoric ecosystems.

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

DNA analysis from Arctic locations and modern species has provided insights into woolly mammoth extinction and climate change impacts.

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?

Climate change, hunting, and environmental factors led to the extinction of woolly mammoths and other megafauna.

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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Studying the woolly mammoths' extinction highlights the need for sustainable conservation and management of ecosystems.