The woolly mammoths went extinct around 10,000 years ago, with the exact cause of their extinction still debated among researchers.

The primary factors that contributed to the extinction of woolly mammoths include climate change, which reduced their habitats and made them vulnerable to other threats.

Human hunting is also believed to have played a role in the decline of woolly mammoth populations, with evidence suggesting that humans interacted with mammoths in Siberia for 800 years.

Climate change led to a reduction in the availability of food for mammoths, making it difficult for them to survive, and the warming climate caused the replacement of former mammoth pastures with trees and swamp plants.

The loss of genetic diversity in woolly mammoths, due to limited mutations, small population sizes, and inbreeding, also affected their ability to adapt to changing environments, making them more vulnerable to extinction.

The isolation of mammoth populations, such as those on Wrangel Island, contributed to their low genetic diversity, making them more susceptible to extinction.

The extinction of woolly mammoths had a significant impact on the ecosystem, leading to an increase in grassland fires and a change in the composition of plant species.

The study of woolly mammoth genetics has provided valuable insights into their evolution, adaptation, and extinction, with researchers analyzing DNA from fossils and excrement to reconstruct their genetic history.

The comparison of woolly mammoth genomes to elephant genomes has also provided insights into their evolutionary history, with millions of base pairs differing between the two species.

Overall, the extinction of woolly mammoths was likely the result of a combination of factors, including climate change, human hunting, and the loss of genetic diversity, with further research needed to fully understand the complex interactions that led to their demise.

The temporal correlation between climate change, human hunting, and the decline of woolly mammoths suggests that the factors interacted to contribute to their extinction over a period of thousands of years.

The spatial correlation between climate change, human hunting, and the decline of woolly mammoths shows that the factors affected different regions and populations, including the Wrangel Island population, which survived for 6,000 years after the mainland extinction.

The decline of woolly mammoths was a gradual process that occurred over thousands of years, with the population dwindling due to climate change, human hunting, and other factors.

The exact cause of the woolly mammoths' disappearance remains unknown, but it is assumed to be a sudden event, possibly a disease outbreak or climatic perturbation.

The study of the woolly mammoths' extinction provides valuable insights into the impacts of climate change and human activity on ecosystems and the importance of conservation efforts to protect vulnerable species.

The analysis of mammoth remains and fossils has revealed that human hunting may have had a significant impact on woolly mammoth populations, particularly in certain regions and time periods.

The discovery of a 17,000-year-old mammoth fossil in Alaska, with a well-preserved tusk, has provided new insights into the life and death of these magnificent creatures.

The estimated impact of human hunting on woolly mammoth populations is still a topic of ongoing research and debate, with new findings and discoveries shedding more light on the complex relationships between humans and animals in the past.

The loss of megafauna, including woolly mammoths, increased grassland fires 50,000 years ago, and wildfire activity increased after megafauna extinction.

The extinction of woolly mammoths is believed to have occurred around 4,000 years ago, with the last surviving mammoths found on Wrangel Island.

The island mammoth population had low genetic diversity due to interbreeding, but inbreeding was not the primary cause of their extinction.

A random event, rather than genetics, is believed to have caused the extinction of the Wrangel Island mammoths.

The genetic diversity of the Wrangel Island mammoths was low due to inbreeding, but it is not thought to have been fatal.

The population of mammoths on Wrangel Island grew from 8 to 300 individuals over 20 generations, but eventually declined and became extinct.

The loss of genetic diversity and the isolation of mammoth populations made them more susceptible to disease outbreaks and the introduction of new species, which may have contributed to their decline.

Natural selection purged harmful variants in the mammoth population, but genetic drift preserved mutations across generations in small populations.

The extinction of woolly mammoths had a significant impact on the ecosystem, leading to an increase in grassland fires and a change in the composition of plant species.

The collapse of mammoth populations also had a ripple effect on the food chain, leading to the decline of predators and fruit trees that relied on them for seed dispersal.

The reduction of food supply due to climate change was a major contributor to the extinction of woolly mammoths.

The mammoths were unable to adapt quickly enough to the changes in their landscape, which ultimately led to their extinction.

Human activity, including hunting and habitat destruction, may have contributed to the extinction of woolly mammoths, but the primary cause is still debated among researchers.

The analysis of DNA from mammoth remains has provided valuable insights into the causes of their extinction, including the effects of climate change and genetic diversity.

The study of mammoth migration patterns and habitat use has also shed light on the spatial correlation between climate change and mammoth extinction.

The temporal correlation between human hunting and mammoth extinction is supported by the discovery of mammoth remains with evidence of human hunting, such as spear wounds.

The interaction between climate change and human hunting is complex, and further research is needed to fully understand the causes of woolly mammoth extinction.

The decline of mammoth populations was likely a gradual process, with climate change and human hunting contributing to a decline in population size and genetic diversity over time.

The exact cause of woolly mammoth extinction remains unknown, but it is clear that climate change and human activity played significant roles in their decline.

The study of woolly mammoth extinction can provide valuable lessons for conservation efforts, highlighting the importance of preserving genetic diversity and protecting habitats from human impact.

The correlation between climate change and mammoth extinction is supported by the fact that mammoths survived several ice ages without significant impact, but were unable to adapt to the rapid climate change that occurred at the end of the last ice age.

The woolly mammoths were well adapted to the cold climates of the Pleistocene era, but were ultimately unable to adapt to the rapid environmental changes that occurred at the end of the last ice age.

The extinction of woolly mammoths and other megafauna has had a lasting impact on the environment, including a reduction in nutrient movement and a change in the composition of plant species.

The causes of the woolly mammoth's extinction are complex and multifaceted, and likely included a combination of factors, including climate change, human hunting, and other environmental factors.

The woolly mammoths went extinct around 10,000 years ago, with the exact cause of their extinction still debated among researchers.

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

When did the wooly mammoth mostly become extinct?

The primary factors that contributed to the extinction of woolly mammoths include climate change, which reduced their habitats and made them vulnerable to other threats.

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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

Authors

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 climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Human hunting is also believed to have played a role in the decline of woolly mammoth populations, with evidence suggesting that humans interacted with mammoths in Siberia for 800 years.

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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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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Climate change led to a reduction in the availability of food for mammoths, making it difficult for them to survive, and the warming climate caused the replacement of former mammoth pastures with trees and swamp plants.

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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.
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
shrank grassland
restricted habitat
pastures becoming swampy

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The loss of genetic diversity in woolly mammoths, due to limited mutations, small population sizes, and inbreeding, also affected their ability to adapt to changing environments, making them more vulnerable to extinction.

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Content: Friday 16 Ramadan 1444 AH - 7 April 2023 |
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Study reveals new genetic information about mammoths
The largest-ever analysis of woolly mammoth genetic data has revealed new information about an elephant ice age icon, including information about its puffy hair, tiny ears, ability to withstand cold, store grease and even dry earwax.
Researchers said on Friday they analysed the genomes of 23 woolly mammoths based on remains preserved in Siberian permafrost and then compared them to the genomes of 28 modern-day Asian and African elephants.
David Diez del Molino, an evolutionary geneticist from the Centre for Ancient Paleontology in Stockholm and lead author of the study published in the journal Current Biology, said: “The goal was to find those mutations that are found in all mammoths but are not found in any of the elephants, that is, the genetic adaptations found exclusively in woolly mammoths. ”
"We found that woolly mammoth genes included molecular adaptations related to keeping up with cold Arctic environments, such as dense fur, fat storage and metabolism, thermal sensing, and other adaptations."
The study included genetic strands of a mammoth that lived 700,000 years ago, around the time the mammoth originated in the Siberian steppe, and genetic strands of other mammoths that lived in later times, providing a glimpse of how genetic adaptation evolved in the mammoth.
The new study showed that 92 percent of unique mutations have already appeared since the mammoths were born, with evolution continuing in certain traits.
For example, mammoths' fur and ears continued to swell over time.
Dr Love Dalin, an evolutionary geneticist at the Paleontological Centre in Stockholm and one of the lead authors of the study, said: "In our study, which lived 700,000 years ago, mammoths may have ears larger than those of the last ice age mammoths.
Among the highly evolved genes was one that, when “inhibited ” in test rats, made their ears too small.
The woolly mammoths were roughly the size of modern African elephants, about four meters high, but their ears were much smaller to reduce their body heat loss than if their ears had a large surface.
Several genes related to fur quality and growth differed from contemporary elephants.
One of these genes, when present in humans, is associated with non-combable hair syndrome, a condition characterized by dry, curly hair and the inability to comb it flat.
In mammoths, the most bulging hair, as well as fat deposits, may have contributed to the formation of an insulating layer in the extreme cold.
Mammoth animals have mutated a gene associated with earwax dehydration in humans, but the advantage for mammoths is unknown.
The mutation itself is linked to the lack of a strong armpit odor in humans, but that doesn ’ t mean the mammoths may have smelled good.
Dalin said: “I very much doubt that mammoths were sweating from their armpits.
That's very human, I think.
Other mammals regulate their body heat in other ways.
"So it's not very clear if mammoths have a different smell because of this genetic mutation."

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The isolation of mammoth populations, such as those on Wrangel Island, contributed to their low genetic diversity, making them more susceptible to extinction.

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.

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

The extinction of woolly mammoths had a significant impact on the ecosystem, leading to an increase in grassland fires and a change in the composition of plant species.

Title:

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Extinction of these animals has increased grassland fires
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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."

The study of woolly mammoth genetics has provided valuable insights into their evolution, adaptation, and extinction, with researchers analyzing DNA from fossils and excrement to reconstruct their genetic history.

The comparison of woolly mammoth genomes to elephant genomes has also provided insights into their evolutionary history, with millions of base pairs differing between the two species.

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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.

Related

Up Next

Overall, the extinction of woolly mammoths was likely the result of a combination of factors, including climate change, human hunting, and the loss of genetic diversity, with further research needed to fully understand the complex interactions that led to their demise.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The temporal correlation between climate change, human hunting, and the decline of woolly mammoths suggests that the factors interacted to contribute to their extinction over a period of thousands of years.

Title:

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

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

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?

The spatial correlation between climate change, human hunting, and the decline of woolly mammoths shows that the factors affected different regions and populations, including the Wrangel Island population, which survived for 6,000 years after the mainland extinction.

Title:

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

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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

The decline of woolly mammoths was a gradual process that occurred over thousands of years, with the population dwindling due to climate change, human hunting, and other factors.

Title:

Content: Cross-Strait International
14,000 years ago, mammoth experts revealed the history of life
University researchers in the United States and Canada have successfully pieced together the life history of a 20-year-old female mammoths 14,000 years ago through genetic and isotope analysis, providing a new perspective for humans to understand the behavior of mammoths.
The findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
Or killed by human hunts.
Isotopic features of the mammoth ’ s tusk growth layer indicate that it wandered about 1,000 km over a three-year period and often returned to the interior of Alaska until it died at Swan Point, an Alaskan archaeological site. Although no weapons were found near its remains, it actually died prematurely and crossed timelines with the earliest human inhabitants, suggesting it was likely killed by human hunts.
Tyler Murchie, who participated in the study, said the study could help understand how humans and mammoths lived in related areas, expand genetic understanding of the past, and address more nuanced questions such as how mammoths moved, how they related to each other, and how all of this related to ancient humans.
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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?

The exact cause of the woolly mammoths' disappearance remains unknown, but it is assumed to be a sudden event, possibly a disease outbreak or climatic perturbation.

Title:

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The study of the woolly mammoths' extinction provides valuable insights into the impacts of climate change and human activity on ecosystems and the importance of conservation efforts to protect vulnerable species.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Natural Selection and Genetic Drift

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

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

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

Read More: Rapid Evolution Changes Species in Real Time

What Made the Island Mammoths go Extinct?

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

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

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

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

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

Conservation of Today

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

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

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

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

Article Sources

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

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

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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The analysis of mammoth remains and fossils has revealed that human hunting may have had a significant impact on woolly mammoth populations, particularly in certain regions and time periods.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The discovery of a 17,000-year-old mammoth fossil in Alaska, with a well-preserved tusk, has provided new insights into the life and death of these magnificent creatures.

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

The estimated impact of human hunting on woolly mammoth populations is still a topic of ongoing research and debate, with new findings and discoveries shedding more light on the complex relationships between humans and animals in the past.

Title:

Content: Woolly Mammoth Bones Unearthed in Austrian Wine Cellar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The loss of megafauna, including woolly mammoths, increased grassland fires 50,000 years ago, and wildfire activity increased after megafauna extinction.

The extinction of woolly mammoths is believed to have occurred around 4,000 years ago, with the last surviving mammoths found on Wrangel Island.

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 island mammoth population had low genetic diversity due to interbreeding, but inbreeding was not the primary cause of their extinction.

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

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

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

A random event, rather than genetics, is believed to have caused the extinction of the Wrangel Island mammoths.

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

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The genetic diversity of the Wrangel Island mammoths was low due to inbreeding, but it is not thought to have been fatal.

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

The population of mammoths on Wrangel Island grew from 8 to 300 individuals over 20 generations, but eventually declined and became extinct.

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

The loss of genetic diversity and the isolation of mammoth populations made them more susceptible to disease outbreaks and the introduction of new species, which may have contributed to their decline.

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Natural selection purged harmful variants in the mammoth population, but genetic drift preserved mutations across generations in small populations.

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

The extinction of woolly mammoths had a significant impact on the ecosystem, leading to an increase in grassland fires and a change in the composition of plant species.

The collapse of mammoth populations also had a ripple effect on the food chain, leading to the decline of predators and fruit trees that relied on them for seed dispersal.

The reduction of food supply due to climate change was a major contributor to the extinction of woolly mammoths.

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?

The mammoths were unable to adapt quickly enough to the changes in their landscape, which ultimately led to their extinction.

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?

Human activity, including hunting and habitat destruction, may have contributed to the extinction of woolly mammoths, but the primary cause is still debated among researchers.

Title:

Content: Scientists fear a repeat of an ancient fire that wiped out entire species
Science and Technology
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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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According to most recent research, what cause of wooly mammoth extinction is not as important as previously believed?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The analysis of DNA from mammoth remains has provided valuable insights into the causes of their extinction, including the effects of climate change and genetic diversity.

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?

The study of mammoth migration patterns and habitat use has also shed light on the spatial correlation between climate change and mammoth extinction.

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The temporal correlation between human hunting and mammoth extinction is supported by the discovery of mammoth remains with evidence of human hunting, such as spear wounds.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The interaction between climate change and human hunting is complex, and further research is needed to fully understand the causes of woolly mammoth extinction.

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The decline of mammoth populations was likely a gradual process, with climate change and human hunting contributing to a decline in population size and genetic diversity over time.

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?

The exact cause of woolly mammoth extinction remains unknown, but it is clear that climate change and human activity played significant roles in their decline.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The study of woolly mammoth extinction can provide valuable lessons for conservation efforts, highlighting the importance of preserving genetic diversity and protecting habitats from human impact.

The correlation between climate change and mammoth extinction is supported by the fact that mammoths survived several ice ages without significant impact, but were unable to adapt to the rapid climate change that occurred at the end of the last ice age.

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?

The woolly mammoths were well adapted to the cold climates of the Pleistocene era, but were ultimately unable to adapt to the rapid environmental changes that occurred at the end of the last ice age.

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

When did the wooly mammoth mostly become extinct?

The extinction of woolly mammoths and other megafauna has had a lasting impact on the environment, including a reduction in nutrient movement and a change in the composition of plant species.

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 causes of the woolly mammoth's extinction are complex and multifaceted, and likely included a combination of factors, including climate change, human hunting, and other environmental factors.

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?