Woolly mammoths went extinct due to human hunting and climate change.

The woolly mammoths are believed to have gone extinct between 10,000 to 50,000 years ago, possibly due to climate change altering vegetation around 13,000 years ago.

Human-induced climate change, including a 5.5 degree Celsius temperature rise, contributed to wildfires and the extinction of woolly mammoths.

Genetic analysis revealed the mammoth's life history, providing insights into the impact of early human migration on woolly mammoth populations.

The mammoth's death coincided with early human inhabitants, with isotope analysis revealing their complex interactions through migration patterns and diet.

Woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island survived for 6,000 years after mainland extinction, disappearing 4,000 years ago due to possible disease, fire, or climate factors.

Mammoths died out due to sharp climate change that replaced their pastures with trees and swamp plants, making it hard for them to find food.

Woolly mammoths were hunted by Stone Age people and likely driven to extinction around 4,000 years ago.

Hunting methods for woolly mammoths varied, with evidence of spearpoints and stone tools found in Nebraska dating back to the Clovis culture.

The discovery of mammoth bones in Austria suggests that humans may have set traps, indicating coordination and planning.

The extinction of woolly mammoths was likely caused by a combination of climate change, human hunting, and loss of genetic diversity.

Studying woolly mammoth extinction informs our understanding of climate change and human impacts on modern ecosystems.

The extinction of woolly mammoths resulted from multiple factors, including climate change and human hunting, and understanding these interactions is crucial for preserving biodiversity.

Woolly mammoths went extinct due to human hunting and climate change.

Title:

Content: Woolly Mammoth Bones Unearthed in Austrian Wine Cellar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The woolly mammoths are believed to have gone extinct between 10,000 to 50,000 years ago, possibly due to climate change altering vegetation around 13,000 years ago.

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 is the primary cause of wooly mammoth extinction?

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

food sources disappearing
restricted habitat

What are the causes of 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?

Human-induced climate change, including a 5.5 degree Celsius temperature rise, contributed to wildfires and the extinction of woolly mammoths.

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?

Genetic analysis revealed the mammoth's life history, providing insights into the impact of early human migration on woolly mammoth populations.

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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The mammoth's death coincided with early human inhabitants, with isotope analysis revealing their complex interactions through migration patterns and diet.

Woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island survived for 6,000 years after mainland extinction, disappearing 4,000 years ago due to possible disease, fire, or climate factors.

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 are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

When did the last population of wooly mammoth become extinct?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

Mammoths died out due to sharp climate change that replaced their pastures with trees and swamp plants, making it hard for them to find food.

Title:

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

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?

Woolly mammoths were hunted by Stone Age people and likely driven to extinction around 4,000 years ago.

Title:

Content: No jokes about overindulging please, but an Austrian winemaker found three enormous mammoths while renovating his wine cellar.

Well, their bones.

Experts have called the find, in Gobelsburg, north west of Vienna, as the most significant of its kind in more than 100 years and an archaeological sensation.

In addition to adding to the catalogue of mammoth bones already discovered, the fact all three animals appear to be on top of each other could suggest they were caught in a trap. This could help answer a question that has long puzzled archaeologists – how did humans hunt these giant creatures?

The stunning find was made by Andreas Pernerstorfer, who discovered what he initially thought was a piece of wood while digging out the cellar. He reported the find to the Federal Monuments Office, which referred him to the Austrian Archaeological Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW).

Around 150 years ago flint artefacts, jewellry fossils and charcoal were all found in an adjacent cellar, which were thought to be around 30,000 to 40,000 years old.

Archaeologists believe the layer of mammoth bones probably belonged to the same site.

They think the ‘significant bone layer’ contains the remains of at least three different mammoths.

‘Such a dense layer of bones is rare,’ said Hannah Parow-Souchon, who is leading the excavation. ‘It is the first time that we have been able to examine something like this in Austria using modern means – a unique opportunity for research.’

Mammoths: the lowdown

Mammoths are an extinct member of the elephantidae family, which includes modern-day elephants.

There were several species of mammoth, the most well-known of which is the woolly mammoth – which was also the smallest.

Mammoths evolved from the African mammoth, before spreading across Eurasia and North America.

The last mammoths, isolated groups of woolly mammoths, are thought to have gone extinct about 4,000 years ago.

However, work is ongoing to try to resurrect the species.

Researchers have long known that people in the Stone Age hunted mammoths, but exactly how they were able to take down the nine-tonne, three metre-high animals is unknown.

Now the team is investigating the site to try to determine did they simply die there, or did they fall into a trap set by locals?

If the answer is B, it will change our understanding of how Stone Age societies operated.

Once the dig is complete, the bones will be sent to the Natural History Museum in Vienna for restoration.

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

When did the last population of wooly mammoth become extinct?

Hunting methods for woolly mammoths varied, with evidence of spearpoints and stone tools found in Nebraska dating back to the Clovis culture.

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Uncovering history: Archaeological sites provide window to Nebraska's past

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The clues are tantalizing.

Could Nebraska be home to one of the rare archeological sites providing evidence that humans walked the Great Plains as long ago as 18,000 years?

A bone and bone flakes from a mammoth's shoulder on display at the Nebraska History Museum in Lincoln raise the still-contested question of how long humans have lived in the Great Plains.

Radiocarbon dating of the bones found in Frontier County indicates the animal lived 18,000 years ago. And some researchers say the flakes could only have been made by a human chipping away at the bone with a stone tool.

Archeological digs such as this one in southwest Nebraska have opened a doorway to the past, tracing the sometimes slow, sometimes rapid changes in the lives and cultures of the various peoples who have called Nebraska home.

Nebraska's most important archeological pieces, including the mammoth's shoulder, are on display at the Nebraska History Museum until Dec. 31. The exhibit is titled "Piecing Together the Past: An Exhibit Exploring 13,000 Years of History with Nebraska's Archeologists."

Nebraska has 11,450 recorded archeological sites, a number that continues to grow  as new sites are found.

The sites range from the earliest known presence of humans to more recent, abandoned, bulldozed farmsteads. They are found in 91 of 93 counties, with Arthur and Logan Counties being the exceptions.

Discovered along the shore of Medicine Creek Reservoir in 1987, the mammoth bones at the "La Sena" site have the potential to place people in Nebraska 5,000 years earlier than evidence otherwise proves — the 13,000 years on display at the museum. The bones are also an indication of how past evidence can be difficult to decipher.

Those who believe the skeleton is an indication of human activity also point to the unusual way some accompanying bones were smashed open. A human was trying to get to the nourishing marrow or use the sharp bone fragments as cutting tools, these scientists believe.

Other archeologists are unpersuaded. They believe the bone fractures have nothing to do with humans.

Rob Bozell, the recently retired state archeologist for Nebraska, said it is certain that people have been living in what is now Nebraska for at least 13,000 years and that archeological evidence shows, at various points, rapid societal changes.

Spearpoints and other stone tools found in blowouts throughout the state and along waterways are the earliest definitive evidence of human activity in Nebraska, he said.

The tools date to the Clovis culture, which gets its name from the site where such spearpoints were first discovered, near Clovis, New Mexico. Left by hunters, similar spear points have since been confirmed across North America, including Nebraska.

"It's clear people have been here a very long time," Bozell said. "If you think of 13,000 years as the length of your arm, from your shoulder to your finger tip, the period when European-Americans have been here is your fingernail."

Any group that has lived here has migrated in, scholars say.

Until about 2,000 years ago — about the time of Christ — the people who lived in Nebraska were largely hunters, living in small groups and mostly on the move, evidence shows.

And then, relatively suddenly, the lives of people across North America, including in Nebraska, began to change, Bozell said. Their lives became more settled, less migratory, he said. The were living in one place longer and in larger groups. They farmed more.

Pottery began making an appearance, a significant innovation because it provided another manner of cooking and storing food.

For reasons that aren't certain, another acceleration in communal living occurred about 1,000 years ago, and from there, "things really took off," Bozell said.

Suddenly, people were living in much larger communities and sturdier housing.

"They lived in houses, framed, timbered houses," Bozell said. "Not temporary huts or tipis, but houses."

People began farming in earnest, and corn became an even more integral part of life.

"When you excavate sites from 1,000 years ago, you find handfuls of corn," Bozell said. "It's just amazing how much corn people grew."

Of the Native American tribes with names familiar to people today, the Pawnee have the longest Nebraska roots, going back at least 1,000 years, historians and archeologists say.

Among the finds in Nebraska: 900-year-old pots uncovered during highway construction in Sarpy County, the layout of a 800-year-old lodge floor in Cass County during construction of Interstate 80, and a 700-year-old lodge floor in Thurston County. The lodges had large underground storage pits for grain and other goods. In the center was a stain where the fire had been kept.

On a hillside along Nebraska Highway 31, just south of Interstate 80 sits the Patterson Site, one of the premiere archeological digs in the Omaha area. Now a treed, grassy knoll, its past is visible only in the depressions where several homes once stood.

The site likely dates back 800 years or so and may have been a small hamlet or various homes built by a succession of families over a hundred years or so.

Construction of the highway went right through the site, so archeologists excavated and studied one of the homesites before the highway obliterated it.

On a recent February afternoon, Bozell walked the site and explained its history. People who lived here would have farmed corn and other produce along the creek below the bluff and hunted game around the area.

Similar farmsteads and hamlets can be found on bluffs throughout the region, he said. While the Patterson Site along Nebraska 31 is not open to the public, other sites are including at Fontenelle Forest in Bellevue and at the Glenwood (Iowa) Archaeological State Preserve. The Glenwood Preserve is located at the intersection of U.S. Highway 34 and Levi Road just southeast of Glenwood. A burial mound and homesites can be found at Mahoney State Park in Ashland.

Typically, the homesites today appear as wide depressions in the ground.

From early on, people traded widely, said Nolan Johnson, highway archeologist with the Nebraska State Archeology Office.

Nebraska archeological sites yield finds of obsidian tools, copper ornaments and marine shell jewelry. None of those materials originated in Nebraska, but instead came from as far away as New Mexico or Idaho, the Great Lakes or Gulf Coast, Johnson said.

Archeological sites also hint at the assets people native to this area may have used in trading. Caches of bison shoulder blades have been found in home storage pits. The blades would have been used as hoes, and a large collection could mean the blades were to be used as "currency" in trading.

Archeological sites also illuminate how tribes migrated across the continent. Sherds of pottery with flecks of shells tell archeologists that the Oneota people, who hailed from the upper Midwest and Great Lakes regions, also called Nebraska home.

Most archeological sites in Nebraska are located close to water, typically rivers, Johnson said.

Why? For most of the time that humans have lived in Nebraska, they've been on foot. Their only pack animal was the dog.

"Most places where Native Americans were living for long periods of time were close to permanent sources of water," Johnson said. "You just can't carry all the water you need very far. You're not going to walk a mile to get a drink of water in the morning. That was one of the limiting factors in Nebraska."

Just as eastern Nebraska is the state's most populous region today, it was in the past too, due to its more plentiful rainfall.

Another relatively rapid change in lifestyle occurred more than 300 years ago with the arrival of Europeans and then Americans, initially on military expeditions and to trade.

"It starts slowly in the 1700s and by the early 1800s, (native) cultures have been transformed," Bozell said.

Not only were whites and their trade goods arriving in the 1700s and 1800s, but so were new tribes, pushed into the area by the relentless expansion, farther east, of European-Americans.

Whites brought horses, metal cookware, guns and other items that they traded with Native Americans for animal pelts.

Contact with traders shows up in changes at archeological sites, Johnson and Bozell said.

Excavations from sites dating to this era find fewer clay pots and instead more metal ones. Fewer bison shoulder hoes and more iron hoes. Fewer stone-tipped arrows and more metal arrows and firearms.

Many of the sites were uncovered during the Works Progress Administration, the 1930s Depression era jobs program. For the most part, sites have been discovered during construction — of a highway, a reservoir or other development.

The science of archaeology has changed over the last century. Archeologists no longer excavate a site without good reason — usually if it's about to be destroyed due to construction, Johnson said. If possible, construction will be re-routed and the site will be left undisturbed. Left in the ground, the site has the potential to tell a fuller story for future archeologists.

For all that archaeology brings to the table, it has its limits. Oral history, stories passed down by indigenous peoples, also provide insights.

"There are a whole slew of questions that can be at least partially answered (by archaeology)," Bozell said. "But there are a lot of limitations to archaeology. We can't dig up conversations, we can't dig up thoughts, we can't dig up feelings and emotions. We dig up 'things,' and from those things and places, we can begin to craft a general story of past experience."

Oral history — knowledge handed down through the generations — also provides information on early cultures.

"Archaeology is like CSI, it's all about material evidence and how you interpret that evidence," said Lance Foster, historic preservation officer of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska. "It doesn't get into how people think. When you're dealing with oral traditions, you're dealing with a deep sense of meaning, why we are here and where we are going."

In terms of paleo-history, there are areas where there is solid agreement between archaeology and the oral traditions, Foster said. Both, for example, point to a distant past when ice dominated the land and large animals roamed.

"The closer you get to our times, you start to see a whole bunch of lines of evidence work together," he said.

"A lot of people think archaeology is collecting arrowheads," Foster said. "That's not archaeology. That's collecting, that's artifact hunting. If you take an arrowhead and put it in a frame over your bed, it's like tearing a word out of a book and pasting it on the wall. It needs context, the rest of what was on the page, in the book."

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Nancy Gaarder helps cover public safety and weather events as an editor on The World-Herald's breaking news desk. Follow her on Twitter @gaarder. Email: nancy.gaarder@owh.com

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The discovery of mammoth bones in Austria suggests that humans may have set traps, indicating coordination and planning.

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The extinction of woolly mammoths was likely caused by a combination of climate change, human hunting, and loss of genetic diversity.

Title:

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

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

How did 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?

Studying woolly mammoth extinction informs our understanding of climate change and human impacts on modern ecosystems.

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

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The extinction of woolly mammoths resulted from multiple factors, including climate change and human hunting, and understanding these interactions is crucial for preserving biodiversity.

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

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

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

10 now-extinct animals from the Ice Age

1. Neanderthals

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

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

2. Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius)

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

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

3. Giant ground sloth (Megatherium americanum)

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

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

4. Cave bears (Ursus spelaeus)

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

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

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

5. Dire wolf (Canis dirus)

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

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

6. Sabre Tooth Cat (Smilodon genus)

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

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

7. Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus)

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

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

8. Giant Beaver (Castoroides genus)

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

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

9. Megalania (Varanus priscus)

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

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

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

10. Diprotodon (Diprotodon genus)

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

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

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

Authors

Leoma WilliamsAnimal behavior researcher and science writer

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

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?