The extinction of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was a multifaceted event shaped by the interplay of rapid climate change and expanding human activities during the transition from the last Ice Age to the current interglacial period.

These factors not only led to the disappearance of the mammoth but also provide a critical case study for understanding the mechanisms of species extinction and the profound influence of humans on prehistoric ecosystems .

**Climate Change and Habitat Loss:** Woolly mammoths were highly adapted to the cold, dry grassland environments that dominated the northern hemisphere during the last glacial period, which began around 115,000 years ago and lasted until about 10,000 years ago .

Their thick fur, fat reserves, and specialized teeth enabled them to thrive in tundra-steppe habitats, feeding on tough, fibrous plants .

As the Ice Age ended, global temperatures rose sharply, triggering the retreat of ice sheets and the expansion of forests into former grasslands .

This transformation drastically reduced the mammoth’s preferred habitat, fragmenting their populations and confining them to isolated refuges such as Arctic islands near Siberia and Alaska .

Paleoenvironmental reconstructions show that these changes in vegetation composition critically affected mammoth food availability, leading to nutritional stress and population declines .

The Bølling-Allerød deglacial phase (approximately 12,900 to 11,700 years ago) exemplifies a period when rapid warming coincided with significant changes in mammoth populations, suggesting that climatic fluctuations directly altered landscapes and food resources, pushing mammoths into more restricted ranges and increasing their vulnerability .

The loss of open grasslands and the encroachment of forests not only reduced the carrying capacity for mammoths but also increased competition among herbivores for dwindling resources .

**Human Hunting and Predation:** The arrival and expansion of early humans into mammoth habitats introduced a new and significant source of mortality.

Archaeological evidence from sites such as the Berelekh River in Siberia, where thousands of mammoth bones were found alongside human artifacts and hearths, demonstrates that humans hunted mammoths for meat, hides, and bones, which were used for tools and construction .

In the UK, a mammoth graveyard dating back approximately 200,000 years was discovered with Neanderthal tools, indicating that Neanderthals either hunted or scavenged mammoths .

In Austria, the arrangement of mammoth bones in a wine cellar suggests the use of traps or organized group hunting strategies .

The La Sena site in Nebraska, with tool-marked mammoth bones, further supports the widespread and persistent human exploitation of mammoths across Eurasia and North America .

Early humans employed sophisticated hunting techniques, including the use of spears, axes, and coordinated group efforts, to capture these large animals .

The mobility of mammoths, capable of traveling vast distances—up to 70,000 kilometers in a lifetime as revealed by isotopic analysis of tusks—may have made them more predictable targets for human hunters who could exploit their migration routes .

As human populations expanded and hunting intensified, mammoths faced increased predation pressure, which, when combined with environmental stressors, likely accelerated their decline .

**Population Isolation and Genetic Factors:** The fragmentation of mammoth habitats due to climate change led to increasingly isolated populations, particularly in regions such as Wrangel Island, where the last known mammoths survived until about 4,000 years ago .

Genetic studies indicate that while inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity were present in these isolated groups, they were not the primary drivers of extinction .

Instead, external pressures from environmental changes and human predation overwhelmed the species’ ability to adapt and recover, with additional factors such as disease outbreaks or short-term climatic perturbations possibly playing roles in their final disappearance .

**Broader Megafaunal Extinction Patterns:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth was part of a broader pattern of late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, which saw the disappearance of many large mammals, including cave bears, giant ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats .

These extinctions were driven by the same combination of rapid climate change and increased human hunting and habitat alteration .

The loss of keystone species like the mammoth had cascading effects on ecosystems, altering vegetation patterns and reducing biodiversity .

**Paleoecological and Archaeological Insights:** Recent paleontological discoveries, such as the well-preserved remains of a baby woolly mammoth in the Yukon, provide valuable information about mammoth biology and ecology, helping researchers reconstruct the environmental conditions and pressures that led to their extinction .

Archaeological evidence, including the use of mammoth ivory for tools, ornaments, and even the oldest known decorated jewelry, highlights the cultural significance of mammoths to early humans .

The presence of mammoth bones and tusks in construction and tool-making further underscores their importance in prehistoric societies .

**Comparative Extinction Events and Modern Implications:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth aligns with historical patterns where climate change has been a major driver of biodiversity loss.

For example, the Late Permian Mass Extinction was caused by global warming, ocean acidification, and ozone depletion, resulting in the loss of over 90% of marine species and 75% of terrestrial species .

Massive volcanic eruptions over the past 260 million years have also triggered extreme greenhouse warming and mass extinctions .

These events illustrate how rapid environmental changes can disrupt ecosystems and lead to widespread species loss .

Current studies warn that ongoing anthropogenic climate change is accelerating extinction risks, with projections indicating that if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, mass extinctions comparable to those in Earth’s history could occur, particularly affecting species with limited habitat options .

The present rate of species extinction is estimated to be 35 times faster than historical norms, primarily due to habitat destruction, climate disruption, and human activities .

The loss of biodiversity, including keystone species like the mammoth, has profound implications for ecosystem stability and human survival .

**Interconnected Effects and Ecosystem Dynamics:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth exemplifies how the interplay between climate change and human hunting can create compounded effects on vulnerable species.

As climate change reduced their habitat and food sources, human hunting further pressured already declining populations, hastening their extinction .

The disappearance of mammoths, which were keystone herbivores, likely led to shifts in vegetation patterns and altered the structure and biodiversity of tundra ecosystems .

The cascading ecological effects highlight the interconnectedness of species and their environments and underscore the profound influence humans have had on prehistoric ecosystems .

**Summary of Causes:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth was driven by a combination of rapid climate warming at the end of the last Ice Age, which transformed their habitats and reduced food availability, and increased hunting pressure from expanding human populations [36d196bf_1

The extinction of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was a multifaceted event shaped by the interplay of rapid climate change and expanding human activities during the transition from the last Ice Age to the current interglacial period.

The extinction of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was a multifaceted event shaped by the interplay of rapid climate change and expanding human activities during the transition from the last Ice Age to the current interglacial period.

The extinction of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was a multifaceted event shaped by the interplay of rapid climate change and expanding human activities during the transition from the last Ice Age to the current interglacial period.

These factors not only led to the disappearance of the mammoth but also provide a critical case study for understanding the mechanisms of species extinction and the profound influence of humans on prehistoric ecosystems .

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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

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Leoma WilliamsAnimal behavior researcher and science writer

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

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Content: 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.

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A gold miner breaking through permafrost in the Canadian Yukon uncovered an almost completely intact baby woolly mammoth. The find, officials say, is the best-preserved specimen in North America to date and only the second full calf ever found, offering paleontologists a rare glimpse into the ancient mammals.

The 55-inch calf, which Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal,” lived approximately 30,000 years ago, and was entombed at about one month of age in the permafrost during the last ice age.

On June 21, Treadstone Mining employee Travis Mudry was cutting through a deep layer of permafrost with a tool known as a ripping attachment when he saw what he thought was the head of an ancient bison. A closer inspection revealed skin, eyes, and, most notably, a trunk.

Treadstone reached out to the Yukon government, and paleontologists from Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary advised the mining crew on how to preserve the find until they made it to the scene. Mudry carefully unearthed the mammoth in two sections, and the crew covered it in wet blankets and tarp. The timing was serendipitous, researchers told the CBC, as a storm came that could have washed out the find hit quickly after they arrived.

Paleontologists were stunned at the detail in the find. “The most incredible thing about Nun cho ga is the preservation … toe nails, hide intact, hair, trunk, intestines…” tweeted University of Calgary paleontologist Dan Shugar.

Officials and scientists will now begin the process of studying Nun cho ga as a means to not only glean a better understanding of the extinct species, but also gain a window onto other large game of its era like bison like wild horses and cave lions. “As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my life long dreams to come face to face with a real woolly mammoth,” said Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon Government, in a statement. “That dream came true today. Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.“

The team is also working closely with Yukon First Nations leaders. “This is a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on the next steps in the process for moving forward with these remains in a way that honors our traditions, culture, and laws,” stated Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Chief Roberta Joseph.

[Related: This startup wants to bring mammoths back to the Arctic]

The only other known near-complete woolly mammoth calf was uncovered in Siberia in 2007. Another partial infant found in North America dates back to an Alaskan gold mine in 1948.

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Content: DNA adds to debate about new bird species

Crested berrypecker, Paramythia montium. (Credit: Nick Athanas/Flickr)

Researchers report evidence that birds in mountainous areas of New Guinea left lowland habitats for higher and higher mountain elevations throughout their evolution.

Millions of years of climatic fluctuations have contributed to pushing bird species upslope—as is probably happening now.

One of the fundamental questions in biology, and a centuries-old academic debate, is: How do new species form? And, how do species end up on mountaintops several kilometers high? Indeed, 85% of the world’s vertebrates—birds included—live in mountainous areas where lowland habitats isolate animal species and populations from one another.

“The discussion about how mountain bird species arise has been ongoing among scientific researchers for many years. Some say, ‘Obviously, birds can just fly from one mountain to another,’ while others say, ‘Well, actually they don’t.’ Scientists have been arguing about this since Darwin and Wallace. But until now, no one had the scientific evidence,” explains associate professor Knud Andreas Jønsson of the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen.

He and fellow researchers from the University of Copenhagen now have evidence that can settle the feud, or at least the part of it concerning the enormous island region around Indonesia and Australia. The evidence comes as the result of collecting entire genomes from various bird populations on the world’s largest tropical island, mountainous New Guinea.

DNA from mountain birds

Genomic analyses have established that bird species emerge in the lowlands and then move higher and higher into mountainous areas over millions of years—probably both due to competition and climate change—before eventually going extinct. For this reason, mountain peaks, like islands, are often referred to as evolutionary dead ends. The results appear in the journal Nature Communications.

By sequencing DNA from birds of the same species, but living on two separate mountains, researchers were able to investigate how genetically different these populations are from each other.

“We can see that the higher up in the mountains birds live, the greater the differences between populations of the same species. Some of the populations are so different, that one could make the case that they are distinct species. Conversely, there are greater similarities among lowland populations. This tells us that the spread of new species must have taken place from lowland habitats upwards,” explains Jønsson, the study’s lead author.

Because the researchers are also familiar with the generation time of these birds, they have been able to measure that the movement of species from lowlands to mountaintops has occurred gradually, over a couple million years.

Jønsson points out that the study does not necessarily suggest an upslope pattern of colonization globally. Therefore, it is important to investigate the processes behind species formation within specific zoogeographical regions.

Climate in flux

The study also shows that climate fluctuations, especially over the past two million years—known as Pleistocene climate oscillations—caused dramatic fluctuations in the size of the populations. At times, climate fluctuations probably contributed to the upslope evolution.

“As it gets warmer, montane forests and birds are pushed further upslope, to where there is less and less habitat and to where they are more likely to become extinct. As a result, one sees large fluctuations in population sizes. As it got warmer, populations shrank, and the poorer a population’s chances became for further colonization,” explains Jønsson.

On average, bird species survive a few million years before dying out. The smaller the population, the more vulnerable a species is and the greater its risk of extinction. As Jønsson points out:

“Our analyses demonstrate that the species living on mountain peaks are 5-10 million years old. So, the oldest and most specialized species live at elevations of 3-4 kilometers, and in small numbers. Climate fluctuations can accelerate the process, so that ancient species will go extinct faster. This will probably be a consequence of modern-day global warming as well.”

Great swaths of lowland forest have disappeared in the New Guinea-Indonesia region. Consequently, there has been a considerable focus on the loss of the many lowland species living there. But according to the researcher, the new results could serve to help prioritize the conservation of highland birds.

“There is no doubt that highland bird species are the ones most vulnerable to global warming. Given that it has taken millions of years for their populations to build and their great genetic variation on individual mountain peaks, perhaps something more should be done to preserve them. It isn’t just a global goal to preserve species, but to preserve genetic diversity,” concludes Jønsson.

Source: University of Copenhagen

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Mammoth-hunters who tracked their prey to ... Swindon

Remains found in a quarry in Wiltshire astonished even David Attenborough, the part-time palaeontologists who discovered them tell Rosamund Urwin

Sally Hollingworth got goosebumps when she first held a Neanderthal axe that had not been touched in about 215,000 years. An amateur fossil-hunter, she found the axe in April 2017 alongside the bones of ice-age mammoths at a quarry near Swindon that she was exploring with her husband, Neville.

“I realised I was the first person to hold this since whoever dropped it,” she recalls. “Who were they? Why did they drop it? Were they being chased by an angry mammoth? I was holding an object that had never been touched by modern humans. It blows your mind.”

The axe was part of one of the most extraordinary archaeological finds, which is coming to light more than four years later with a BBC1 documentary presented

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New study finds burning by humans and warming altered Andean ecosystems

Humans moved into the Andes about 15,000 years ago and their introduction of regular fire to the landscape created a new ecosystem, research published in Nature Communications finds.

A team led by Florida Tech professor Mark Bush and graduate student Jake Schiferl at the Institute for Global Ecology published their findings in the paper titled "A neotropical perspective on the uniqueness of the Holocene among interglacials."

The scientists studied hundreds of samples of fossil pollen and charcoal from a 305-foot-long sediment core raised from Lake Junin, at an elevation of more than 13,400 feet in the grasslands of the Peruvian Andes. This spanned the last 670,000 years and represented the longest continuous and empirically-dated record of tropical vegetation change to date.

The pollen showed that the area had undergone seven ice ages, with each separated by a warmer period, known as an interglacial, such as the one in which we live now. "The revealed how the vegetation around the lake changed with the coming and going of these ice ages," Schiferl said.

The team found that today's ecosystem of high Andean grasslands, pictured above, was quite different from found in the other interglacials. In earlier interglacials, the lake was surrounded by a mixture of grasslands and shrublands that developed with no, or very little, fire.

Bush said, "As soon as people arrived in the plateau surrounding the lake, the occurrence of fossil charcoal increased dramatically, indicating that people were burning the landscape."

Understanding how tropical systems have responded to large-scale climate change, such as glacial-interglacial fluctuations, and how have altered those responses, is key to current and future ecology.

Fires were probably set deliberately to drive game as part of a hunting strategy and to promote new grass growth which would increase the abundance of the hunted animals. The net effect was to send the ecology of the Junin Plateau onto a new path.

The study reveals that the vegetation of our modern interglacial, i.e., the last 12,000 years, started similarly to other interglacials but around 4,000 years ago diverged and became completely different from any of the other warm periods from the last 670,000 years. Modern Andean grassland ecosystems were created by long-term human manipulation of the environment.

These data affirm that the period of profound human environmental alteration, often termed the Anthropocene, began in the Andes about 4,000 years ago. This study adds weight to scholars who suggest that there was an "early" onset of the Anthropocene, as opposed to those who see it as a product of the industrial revolution or oil-based economies.

More information: J. Schiferl et al, A neotropical perspective on the uniqueness of the Holocene among interglacials, Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-43231-0

Journal information: Nature Communications

Citation: New study finds burning by humans and warming altered Andean ecosystems (2023, November 16) retrieved 16 November 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-11-humans-andean-ecosystems.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

**Climate Change and Habitat Loss:** Woolly mammoths were highly adapted to the cold, dry grassland environments that dominated the northern hemisphere during the last glacial period, which began around 115,000 years ago and lasted until about 10,000 years ago .

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?

When did the wooly mammoth mostly become extinct?

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?

When did the wooly mammoth mostly become extinct?

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?

When did the wooly mammoth mostly become extinct?

Their thick fur, fat reserves, and specialized teeth enabled them to thrive in tundra-steppe habitats, feeding on tough, fibrous plants .

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Content:     The Economic Times daily newspaper is available online now.

    Volcanic eruptions behind lethal climate change millions of years ago: Study

    Synopsis

    Massive volcanic eruptions over the past 260 million years caused climate changes and mass extinction events, according to a study published in Earth-Science Reviews. The eruptions released large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, resulting in extreme greenhouse climate warming. These events occurred every 26 to 33 million years and coincided with changes in the Earth's orbit. Researchers also highlight the need to understand how astronomical movements affect geological processes.

    NEW DELHI: Massive volcanic eruptions and subsequent environmental crises caused changes in climate over the past 260 million years, leading to mass extinction of life during these periods, according to a study. The research, published in the journal Earth-Science Reviews, shows that these eruptions released large amounts of carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere, causing extreme greenhouse climate warming and bringing about near-lethal or lethal conditions to our planet.

    These events-which occur every 26 to 33 million years-coincided with critical changes in the planet's orbit in the solar system, the researchers said.

    "The Earth's geologic processes, long considered to be strictly determined by events within the planet's interior, may in fact be controlled by astronomical cycles in the solar system and the Milky Way galaxy," said Michael Rampino, a professor at New York University, US.

    "Crucially, these forces have converged many times in the Earth's past to foreshadow drastic changes to our climate," said Rampino.

    However, the researchers caution that their findings have no bearing on 20th- and 21st-century climate change, which scientists have shown to be driven by human activity.

    The studied pulses of volcanic eruptions last occurred about 16 million years ago.

    The latest analysis supports the well-established impact of carbon dioxide emissions on climate warming.

    The scientists focused on continental flood-basalt (CFB) eruptions-the largest volcanic eruptions of lava on Earth, with flows covering nearly a half-million square miles-and other major geological events over the past 260 million years.

    These included ocean anoxic events-periods when the Earth's oceans were depleted of oxygen, thereby creating toxic waters-as well as hyper-thermal climate pulses, or rapid rises in global temperatures, and resulting periods of mass extinctions of marine and non-marine life.

    They found that CFB eruptions frequently coincided with these other lethal geological phenomena, illuminating the larger impact of volcanic activity.

    The connection with astronomy is evidenced by the commonality of the multi-million-year regular cycles of volcanism and extreme climate with known cycles of the Earth's orbit in our solar system and in the Milky Way galaxy, the researchers said.

    They found that the agreement between the geological and astrophysical cycles is much too close to be merely a chance occurrence.

    A major remaining question, they add, is determining how the planet's astronomical movements perturb the Earth's internal geological engines.

    "This is an unexpected connection and predicts a convergence of both astronomy and geology-events that take place on the Earth do so in the context of our astronomical environment," Rampino added.
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As the Ice Age ended, global temperatures rose sharply, triggering the retreat of ice sheets and the expansion of forests into former grasslands .

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?

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?

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?

This transformation drastically reduced the mammoth’s preferred habitat, fragmenting their populations and confining them to isolated refuges such as Arctic islands near Siberia and Alaska .

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

Paleoenvironmental reconstructions show that these changes in vegetation composition critically affected mammoth food availability, leading to nutritional stress and population declines .

Title:

Content: 44 mins ago - Science

Earth's sixth mass extinction is underway and "rapidly accelerating," study warns

Earth's sixth mass extinction is already happening — and it is rapidly accelerating, researchers warned in a study out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal.

Why it matters: The study adds to a growing understanding of how humans have — often negatively — impacted Earth's trajectory.

What they found: The study noted that animal species are going extinct at rates 35 times faster than the historical norm over the past million years.

  • Researchers highlighted the role of humans in the phenomenon, noting that animal species lost in the past 500 years would have taken about 18,000 to go extinct in the absence of humans.
  • Habitat destruction, illegal trade and climate disruption will likely continue to drive extinction rate acceleration in the coming decades, the study added.

The mass loss of animal species means losing a record of the planet's evolutionary history and potential, and will have ramifications for humans, Gerardo Ceballos, the study's lead author, told Axios.

  • "There is life on the planet because of the plants and animals — wild plants and animals — and the ecosystems that they form," Ceballos said.
  • The crops humans use, the combination of gases of the atmosphere that make it suitable for life on Earth, and active compounds used for medications, are all in some ways dependent on plants and animals, he added.
  • By losing entire branches of genera, "we're losing the capability of the planet to maintain life in general, and to maintain human life in particular," Ceballos said.

State of play: The new research builds on a number of studies from past years that warned Earth is experiencing a sixth mass extinction.

  • Scientists have previously warned that up to 1 million species are threatened with extinction and some could be lost within decades.
  • A separate study published earlier this summer in the journal Biological Reviews noted that the sixth mass extinction, currently underway, is the first mass extinction "directly induced by a single species – humans."
  • Researchers in June proposed the demarcation of a new epoch to reflect humans' impact on Earth.

Yes but: Not all scientists are convinced that the current wildlife loss constitutes a sixth mass extinction.

  • "We have no idea how to identify a sixth mass extinction," Stuart Pimm, the Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University, told Axios.
  • Disagreeing with the premise of a sixth extinction doesn't mean disputing the fact that the Earth is experiencing wildlife loss that's much faster than in the last few million years, he stressed.
  • "When you start saying, 'Well, how does this compare to what happened 65 million years ago?' That's when it gets really difficult," Pimm said.

Ceballos defined mass extinction as a catastrophic event that happens relatively quickly, is caused by a natural catastrophe, and wipes out 70% of the plants and animals on Earth.

  • The debate over whether a sixth mass extinction is occurring "doesn't really matter," Ceballos said.
  • Regardless of what you call it, Earth is facing massive biodiversity loss, climate change, and the toxification of the environment, he added.

Background: The last mass extinction occurred after an asteroid struck the earth roughly 66 million years ago.

The bottom line: The new study notes that "immediate political, economic, and social efforts of an unprecedented scale" are necessary in order to prevent these mass extinctions and their impacts.

  • Humans have the science, technology, and knowledge "to do much better," Ceballos said.
Go deeper

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The Bølling-Allerød deglacial phase (approximately 12,900 to 11,700 years ago) exemplifies a period when rapid warming coincided with significant changes in mammoth populations, suggesting that climatic fluctuations directly altered landscapes and food resources, pushing mammoths into more restricted ranges and increasing their vulnerability .

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Nature

Humans Have Managed Landscapes With Fire For Almost 100,000 Years

Stephen Luntz

Freelance Writer

May 6 2021, 16:58 UTC

Ancient myths recognized how important controlling fire was to humanity, making us a threat to the gods. The timing of this great development has been much debated, however. A new discovery indicates we have been changing our surroundings with fire for at least 92,000 years.

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On arrival in new lands, humans have used fire to change them to suit their needs. “Firestick farming”  transformed the landscape of Australia and North America, creating environments better suited to hunting and reducing the chance of devastatingly large conflagrations. Anthropologists are seeking to determine when this early technology was mastered, and in particular, whether it preceded humanity's expansion out of Africa.

The difficulty in resolving this question is that thousands of years later, the changes wrought by human fires look similar to those started by lightning. However, Yale's Dr Jessica Thompson has found a distinctive signal in sediments around the edge of Lake Malawi, one of the largest lakes in Africa.

Over a 600,000 year period, these sediments reveal changes in the abundance and diversity of pollen as nearby plant life shifted with changing climate. Around 92,000 years ago, Thompson found an increase in charcoal deposition, indicating more frequent fires in the lake's catchment area.

Such a change could have several causes, but Thompson reports in Science Advances it coincides with a decline in the richness of pollen. “Trees that indicate dense, structurally complex forest canopies are no longer common and are replaced by pollen from plants that deal well with frequent fire and disturbance,” Thompson said in a statement. More sediment was deposited around this time as well, along with more human-made artifacts. With highlands less covered by forests, heavy rains brought more dirt down with them, sometimes accompanied by the items our ancestors had shaped.

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What these changes did not coincide with was new climatic conditions. Lake Malawi has shrunk drastically during dry periods, but stayed high at this time.

"One way or another, it's caused by human activity," Thompson said. What we don't know was whether the changes were deliberate or not. Perhaps an increase in the density of human populations in the area meant more campfires, which in turn led to more escaping and setting nearby forests alight.

Nevertheless, the fire-users almost certainly benefited, creating an ecosystem more attractive to large prey.

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The timing of this development lines up fairly closely with the estimated dates at which Homo Sapiens left Africa. However, co-author Dr Alex Mackay of the University of Wollongong told IFLScience we don't know if the use of fire as a land management tool helped make this possible. “There is evidence the range of things humans were capable of doing expanded around 100,000 years ago.” Mackay told IFLScience. “We don't know whether or not this was the thing that made migration possible.”

This was certainly not humanity's first use of fire. Last week evidence was published of fire more than a million years ago in a South African cave that would have required humans to bring both spark and fuel. Homo Sapiens hadn't even evolved then. Moreover, our biology suggests ancestral species have been eating cooked food for around two million years.

This leaves a long gap between the use of fire for warmth and cooking to harnessing it to change surrounding ecosystems. Mackay told IFLScience humans may have been using fire to change the landscape much earlier. However, if this occurred in outside the great lakes region, for example in southern Africa, it might not have left behind a signal we can read. “Humans co-evolved with fauna in Africa and it is hard to disentangle human the human impact from the rest,” Mackay said.

Nature
  • fire,

  • landscape

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200,000-year-old 'mammoth graveyard' found in UK

Researchers have unearthed a mammoth "graveyard" filled with the bony remains of five individuals — an infant, two juveniles and two adults — that died during the last ice age at what is now a quarry in Swindon, a town in southwest England.

Alongside the mammoth remains, researchers discovered stone tools crafted by Neanderthals, including a hand ax and small flint tools known as scrapers, which were used to clean fresh animal hides, according to DigVentures, the crowdsourced archaeological outfit in the U.K. that led the excavation. However, the team has yet to analyze the mammoth bones to determine whether they have Neanderthal tool marks on them.

"Finding mammoth bones is always extraordinary, but finding ones that are so old and well preserved, and in such close proximity to Neanderthal stone tools is exceptional," Lisa Westcott Wilkins, the co-founder of DigVentures, said in a statement.

Related: Photos: See the Ancient Faces of a Man-Bun Wearing Bloke and a Neanderthal woman

Two amateur fossil hunters, Sally and Neville Hollingworth, discovered the graveyard and Neanderthal tools. Soon after, DigVentures organized two field seasons in 2019 and 2020 to excavate the site. The archaeologist-led work uncovered more ice age remnants, including delicate beetle wings, fragile freshwater snail shells and mammoth remains, such as tusks, leg bones, ribs and vertebrae belonging to a species of Steppe mammoth, a group whose descendants include the woolly mammoth. Although early Steppe mammoths stood up to 13.1 feet (4 meters) high at the shoulders, the five mammoth individuals at the graveyard were small, an indication that the species might have shrunk during an especially cold spell during the ice age, according to DigVentures.

Researchers dated the site to between 220,000 and 210,000 years ago, toward the end of an interglacial, or warm period, when Neanderthals still lived in Britain. Once temperatures dropped, however, the Neanderthals moved farther south.

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Going forward, the team plans to figure out why so many mammoths died at one spot and whether Neanderthals hunted the beasts or scavenged their remains. Some previously found prehistoric evidence suggests Neanderthals stalked mammoths and other large pachyderms. For instance, Neanderthal footprints were found at a 100,000-year-old "nursery" for straight-tusked elephants (Palaeoloxodon antiquus) in southern Spain, Live Science previously reported

The new graveyard findings are described in the new BBC documentary "Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard," with Sir David Attenborough and Ben Garrod, an evolutionary biologist at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, who joined DigVentures on site to film the excavations. The show airs at 8 p.m. GMT on Dec. 30 on BBC One.

"The findings have enormous value for understanding the human occupation of Britain, and the delicate environmental evidence recovered will also help us understand it in the context of past climate change," Duncan Wilson, the chief executive of Historic England, a British historical preservation body, said in a statement. "Through these finds and the research that will follow, we look forward to further light being shed on life in Britain 200,000 years ago."

The work was funded by Historic England and supported by Keith Wilkinson of ARCA at the University of Winchester, the site's landowners Hills Group Quarry Products and a wider specialist team from several U.K. research institutions.

Originally published on Live Science.

Laura is an editor at Live Science. She edits Life's Little Mysteries and reports on general science, including archaeology and animals. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Scholastic, Popular Science and Spectrum, a site on autism research. She has won multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association for her reporting at a weekly newspaper near Seattle. Laura holds a bachelor's degree in English literature and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and an advanced certificate in science writing from NYU.

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

The loss of open grasslands and the encroachment of forests not only reduced the carrying capacity for mammoths but also increased competition among herbivores for dwindling resources .

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A gold miner breaking through permafrost in the Canadian Yukon uncovered an almost completely intact baby woolly mammoth. The find, officials say, is the best-preserved specimen in North America to date and only the second full calf ever found, offering paleontologists a rare glimpse into the ancient mammals.

The 55-inch calf, which Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal,” lived approximately 30,000 years ago, and was entombed at about one month of age in the permafrost during the last ice age.

On June 21, Treadstone Mining employee Travis Mudry was cutting through a deep layer of permafrost with a tool known as a ripping attachment when he saw what he thought was the head of an ancient bison. A closer inspection revealed skin, eyes, and, most notably, a trunk.

Treadstone reached out to the Yukon government, and paleontologists from Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary advised the mining crew on how to preserve the find until they made it to the scene. Mudry carefully unearthed the mammoth in two sections, and the crew covered it in wet blankets and tarp. The timing was serendipitous, researchers told the CBC, as a storm came that could have washed out the find hit quickly after they arrived.

Paleontologists were stunned at the detail in the find. “The most incredible thing about Nun cho ga is the preservation … toe nails, hide intact, hair, trunk, intestines…” tweeted University of Calgary paleontologist Dan Shugar.

Officials and scientists will now begin the process of studying Nun cho ga as a means to not only glean a better understanding of the extinct species, but also gain a window onto other large game of its era like bison like wild horses and cave lions. “As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my life long dreams to come face to face with a real woolly mammoth,” said Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon Government, in a statement. “That dream came true today. Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.“

The team is also working closely with Yukon First Nations leaders. “This is a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on the next steps in the process for moving forward with these remains in a way that honors our traditions, culture, and laws,” stated Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Chief Roberta Joseph.

[Related: This startup wants to bring mammoths back to the Arctic]

The only other known near-complete woolly mammoth calf was uncovered in Siberia in 2007. Another partial infant found in North America dates back to an Alaskan gold mine in 1948.

MORE TO READ

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

restricted habitat
food sources disappearing
shrank grassland

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

**Human Hunting and Predation:** The arrival and expansion of early humans into mammoth habitats introduced a new and significant source of mortality.

**Human Hunting and Predation:** The arrival and expansion of early humans into mammoth habitats introduced a new and significant source of mortality.

**Human Hunting and Predation:** The arrival and expansion of early humans into mammoth habitats introduced a new and significant source of mortality.

Archaeological evidence from sites such as the Berelekh River in Siberia, where thousands of mammoth bones were found alongside human artifacts and hearths, demonstrates that humans hunted mammoths for meat, hides, and bones, which were used for tools and construction .

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

In the UK, a mammoth graveyard dating back approximately 200,000 years was discovered with Neanderthal tools, indicating that Neanderthals either hunted or scavenged mammoths .

In the UK, a mammoth graveyard dating back approximately 200,000 years was discovered with Neanderthal tools, indicating that Neanderthals either hunted or scavenged mammoths .

In the UK, a mammoth graveyard dating back approximately 200,000 years was discovered with Neanderthal tools, indicating that Neanderthals either hunted or scavenged mammoths .

In Austria, the arrangement of mammoth bones in a wine cellar suggests the use of traps or organized group hunting strategies .

Title:

Content: The Sciences

The Late Permian Mass Extinction Explained

Burning coal caused the largest mass extinction in earth’s history — the Late Permian Mass Extinction, or the Great Dying.

By Gabe AllenJul 22, 2022 10:00 AM
(Credit: Catmando/Shutterstock)

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Mass extinctions are evolutionary turning points — brief moments on a geologic time scale that drastically change the course of life on earth. One moment in particular stands out. The Permian-Triassic extinction, aka the Great Dying, eradicated more than 90 percent of earth’s marine species and 75 percent of terrestrial species 252 million years ago. It was the deadliest mass extinction event in the history of our planet, and its legacy lives on in the flora and fauna of the modern world.

The climactic and geochemical triggers for the Great Dying are unsettlingly similar to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Global warming, ocean acidification and ozone layer-depletion caused ecological collapse.

The organisms that did recover from the extinction, did so slowly. Equatorial regions, which had been scorched beyond recognition, did not regain their characteristic biodiversity for five million years. Global ecosystems lacked both diversity and stability for at least eight million years following the event.

Survivors of the extinction event, though few, eventually repopulated the earth. These organisms are the ancestors of every living thing today. To paleontologists, the End-Permian Mass Extinction is the temporal boundary between the ancient paleozoic fauna and the modern fauna — a theoretical border between our world and a barely-recognizable predecessor.

Finding Precision

As recent as the late 2000s, the research community was significantly divided over what caused the Permian extinction. Some suggested that volcanism was at fault, while others suggested a meteor impact, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, caused the extinction.

Those that preferred the volcanic explanation, suspected the Siberian Traps, an expansive region of volcanic rock in present-day Siberia. The formation developed during an unrivaled period of volcanic rock on the ancient supercontinent Pangea.

“It’s the largest continental volcanic event and the largest mass extinction that we’re aware of on earth ever,” says Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton, a planetary scientist and professor at Arizona State University. “At the time, we didn’t know what caused either one or if they were definitively related to each other.”

In 2014, Chinese and American researchers made a breakthrough. The team extracted ancient volcanic ash from the Global Stratotype Section and Point for the early Triassic period, a site in Meishan, China that contains sediment that dates to the crisis unambiguously. By analyzing the uranium and lead isotopes contained in the ash, they put a relatively precise date on the extinction: 251.9 million years ago, give or take 70,000 years.

The next step was to date the Siberian Traps. Using the same method, the scientists analyzed samples from the site. “The bulk of this diffusive and explosive volcanism led up to the extinction,” says Elkins-Tanton, who was a part of the research team.

From these two dates, a timeline began to emerge. Intense volcanic activity on the ancient supercontinent of Pangea spewed magma through layers of basalt, coal and organic material. The combustion of these layers produced an immense amount of CO2 as well as other greenhouse gasses and chlorofluorocarbons.

Victims and Survivors

On land, both plants and animals perished in equatorial regions. At further latitudes, mosses and other lycopods began to dominate ecosystems that were once forested with conifers. Our ancestors, the tetrapods, died en masse. Survivors fled from the tropics towards the poles.

Like the mass extinctions before it, the End-Permian had an outsized impact on marine organisms. As CO2 from the atmosphere leached into the water, the ocean became more and more acidic. Simultaneously, high temperatures and cyanobacteria blooms consumed dissolved oxygen until there was little left.

Many organisms that had evolved to construct exoskeletons from minerals, found in ambient seawater, did not survive these changes in marine chemistry. The engineers of Permian reef ecosystems, rugose and tabulate corals, went completely extinct. Vast groups of externally-shelled cephalopods, ancestors of the nautilus, succumbed to the same fate. The End-Permian extinguished the last species of Trilobites as well, a group that had been on the decline since the Ordovician Mass Extinction.

Read more: The First Mass Extinction Event Explained: End-Ordovician

As with any mass-extinction, there were survivors of the Great Dying. Before the event, clam-like brachiopods were plentiful and diverse, but the extinction extinguished them in favor of their cousins, the bivalve mollusks. To this day, bivalves are widespread, while only a few orders of brachiopods remain.

Many researchers have speculated that the End-Permian may have catalyzed diversification among tetrapods. Though the extinction wiped many out permanently, the Early Triassic saw the creatures diversify and expand their ranges rapidly. This “radiation” eventually gave rise to archosaurs and later dinosaurs.

Drawing Parallels

The same factors that have driven anthropogenic global warming today drove global ecological collapse at the end of the Permian. An over-abundance of greenhouse gasses made the planet unlivable for most living organisms. Actually, the warming that initiated the End-Permian may have occurred at a much slower rate than anthropogenic global warming.

“It was the same climate change caused by the same greenhouse gasses as what we’re seeing today,” Elkins-Tanton says. “And it was almost the end of multicellular life on earth.”

However, climate scientists project that, if we can lower our emissions quickly enough, we can keep global warming to levels far below the ones that scorched the earth during the earth’s largest extinction event. It’s not too late to avoid total and complete ecological collapse.

“The rate of change might not have been as fast as today, but it changed the temperature so much that it’s really the worst-case scenario of what might happen,” David Bottjer says, paleoecologist and University of Southern California professor of earth sciences. “That’s why we should study it. To understand future scenarios for our climate.”

The future scenario, most-analogous to the End-Permian, would see humans continue to burn fossil fuels until few surviving organisms remained. It’s a scenario that may not represent the end of life on earth, but a fundamental change that would take millions of years to rebound from.

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The La Sena site in Nebraska, with tool-marked mammoth bones, further supports the widespread and persistent human exploitation of mammoths across Eurasia and North America .

Title:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

Early humans employed sophisticated hunting techniques, including the use of spears, axes, and coordinated group efforts, to capture these large animals .

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CIA wants to revive prehistoric species such as the woolly mammoth

The CIA is funding a project that aims to revive iconic species like the woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger, but it’s not good news.

The CIA has become the latest investor in Colossal Biosciences, a genetic engineering company that wants to revive iconic species of the past, such as the woolly mammoth and Tasmanian tiger. According to LiveScience, reports indicate that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is funding research into the ‘resuscitation’ of extinct prehistoric species.

Through a venture capital investment firm called In-Q-Tel, which is funded by the CIA, the government agency has made a financial commitment to Texas-based Colossal Biosciences. The latter’s official website explains that its goal is to “see the woolly mammoth thunder over the tundra once again” by combining “genetic science with the business of discovery.”

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According to the In-Q-Tel blog, investing in the project will help the U.S. government “set the ethical standards” for genetic engineering technology and keep the country at the forefront of nations that may also be interested in engineered genetic code modification research.

Reviving prehistoric creatures

Colossal Biosciences appears to be interested in bringing back various prehistoric animals, such as the woolly mammoth that inhabited Arctic regions from North America to Siberia and became extinct at the end of the Pleistocene due to the disappearance of its natural habitat.

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But the interest in reviving species also includes others such as the Dodo bird, which disappeared from the Earth at the end of the 17th century due to human causes. The Tasmanian tiger is another animal that Colossal has its sights set on; this species became extinct in the 20th century, also due to anthropological causes.

Is it feasible to bring the species back?

Genetic engineering has been used in the past for nature conservation, but only cloning has been used as a measure to prevent species from becoming extinct forever. Genes have been taken from captive-bred specimens for cloning and then reintroduced into the wild.

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So far, genetic modification using the CRISPR addition technique, which is used to ‘copy, paste and replace’ specific gene sequences in DNA, is not a tool that has been used for nature conservation, and many have warned about the dangers this would bring.

The woolly mammoth, for example, lived in the ice age when temperatures were much lower than they are now. It became extinct due to climate change that wiped out its natural habitat, so the thought of reviving it brings with it an inherent ethical debate that cannot be ignored.

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In any case, the large amounts of money that the CIA intends to invest in resuscitating the woolly mammoth and other ancient species could be used for the conservation of species that are currently in danger of disappearing. However, it seems that beyond an animalistic objective, the agency seems to have a special interest in genetic modification, an area that is increasingly growing and completely lacks ethical and professional guidelines.

Story originally published in Spanish in Ecoosfera

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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

The mobility of mammoths, capable of traveling vast distances—up to 70,000 kilometers in a lifetime as revealed by isotopic analysis of tusks—may have made them more predictable targets for human hunters who could exploit their migration routes .

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

As human populations expanded and hunting intensified, mammoths faced increased predation pressure, which, when combined with environmental stressors, likely accelerated their decline .

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A gold miner breaking through permafrost in the Canadian Yukon uncovered an almost completely intact baby woolly mammoth. The find, officials say, is the best-preserved specimen in North America to date and only the second full calf ever found, offering paleontologists a rare glimpse into the ancient mammals.

The 55-inch calf, which Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal,” lived approximately 30,000 years ago, and was entombed at about one month of age in the permafrost during the last ice age.

On June 21, Treadstone Mining employee Travis Mudry was cutting through a deep layer of permafrost with a tool known as a ripping attachment when he saw what he thought was the head of an ancient bison. A closer inspection revealed skin, eyes, and, most notably, a trunk.

Treadstone reached out to the Yukon government, and paleontologists from Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary advised the mining crew on how to preserve the find until they made it to the scene. Mudry carefully unearthed the mammoth in two sections, and the crew covered it in wet blankets and tarp. The timing was serendipitous, researchers told the CBC, as a storm came that could have washed out the find hit quickly after they arrived.

Paleontologists were stunned at the detail in the find. “The most incredible thing about Nun cho ga is the preservation … toe nails, hide intact, hair, trunk, intestines…” tweeted University of Calgary paleontologist Dan Shugar.

Officials and scientists will now begin the process of studying Nun cho ga as a means to not only glean a better understanding of the extinct species, but also gain a window onto other large game of its era like bison like wild horses and cave lions. “As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my life long dreams to come face to face with a real woolly mammoth,” said Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon Government, in a statement. “That dream came true today. Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.“

The team is also working closely with Yukon First Nations leaders. “This is a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on the next steps in the process for moving forward with these remains in a way that honors our traditions, culture, and laws,” stated Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Chief Roberta Joseph.

[Related: This startup wants to bring mammoths back to the Arctic]

The only other known near-complete woolly mammoth calf was uncovered in Siberia in 2007. Another partial infant found in North America dates back to an Alaskan gold mine in 1948.

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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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How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

**Population Isolation and Genetic Factors:** The fragmentation of mammoth habitats due to climate change led to increasingly isolated populations, particularly in regions such as Wrangel Island, where the last known mammoths survived until about 4,000 years ago .

Title:

Content: SHARE

A gold miner breaking through permafrost in the Canadian Yukon uncovered an almost completely intact baby woolly mammoth. The find, officials say, is the best-preserved specimen in North America to date and only the second full calf ever found, offering paleontologists a rare glimpse into the ancient mammals.

The 55-inch calf, which Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal,” lived approximately 30,000 years ago, and was entombed at about one month of age in the permafrost during the last ice age.

On June 21, Treadstone Mining employee Travis Mudry was cutting through a deep layer of permafrost with a tool known as a ripping attachment when he saw what he thought was the head of an ancient bison. A closer inspection revealed skin, eyes, and, most notably, a trunk.

Treadstone reached out to the Yukon government, and paleontologists from Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary advised the mining crew on how to preserve the find until they made it to the scene. Mudry carefully unearthed the mammoth in two sections, and the crew covered it in wet blankets and tarp. The timing was serendipitous, researchers told the CBC, as a storm came that could have washed out the find hit quickly after they arrived.

Paleontologists were stunned at the detail in the find. “The most incredible thing about Nun cho ga is the preservation … toe nails, hide intact, hair, trunk, intestines…” tweeted University of Calgary paleontologist Dan Shugar.

Officials and scientists will now begin the process of studying Nun cho ga as a means to not only glean a better understanding of the extinct species, but also gain a window onto other large game of its era like bison like wild horses and cave lions. “As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my life long dreams to come face to face with a real woolly mammoth,” said Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon Government, in a statement. “That dream came true today. Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.“

The team is also working closely with Yukon First Nations leaders. “This is a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on the next steps in the process for moving forward with these remains in a way that honors our traditions, culture, and laws,” stated Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Chief Roberta Joseph.

[Related: This startup wants to bring mammoths back to the Arctic]

The only other known near-complete woolly mammoth calf was uncovered in Siberia in 2007. Another partial infant found in North America dates back to an Alaskan gold mine in 1948.

MORE TO READ

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?

When did the last population of wooly mammoth become extinct?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

When did the last population of wooly mammoth become extinct?

Where were the last areas of wooly mammoth habitat?

islands in the Arctic Ocean near Siberia and Alaska

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What aspects of climate change contributed to 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

Genetic studies indicate that while inbreeding and reduced genetic diversity were present in these isolated groups, they were not the primary drivers of extinction .

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Biodiversity makes the world go round—from tiny freshwater creatures to giant trees, the living things on planet earth are what makes it flourish. But in recent years, humans haven’t been all too good at preserving biodiversity—research has shown that nature is declining in unprecedented ways. As of 2019, one in four species on earth are at risk of extinction, and rates of extinction now compared to the times before human activity are about a thousand times higher (with higher rates predicted in the future). Humans are directly impacted by biodiversity loss when it comes to things like water availability and agriculture, which can become stressed as species die out or suffer.

This isn’t only devastating purely due to loss of the nature that makes our world special—it’s also a climate change crisis. Not only does climate change power biodiversity loss, but the weakening of natural ecosystems makes it harder to combat growing greenhouse gas emissions. For example, as climate change disasters like droughts and wildfires hit the Amazon rainforest, the trees and wildlife have a harder time bouncing back to normal—hindering their ability to store carbon.  Just last month, the most recent IPCC report stressed the importance of preserving nature—14 percent of all species face a “high rate of extinction” even at the most optimistic warming outcomes.

[Related: Want to better understand the biodiversity of a forest? Ask the locals.]

“Loss of biodiversity, stresses on agricultural productivity, human health risks—the themes highlighted by WGII are not new,” Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, said in a release last month. “We’ve been tracking most of them for years now. What is emerging is the indisputable evidence for how climate change is acting to compound and conjoin these challenges at a rate humankind is currently struggling to keep pace with, and how these impacts often hit the most vulnerable first.”

Still, even knowing how drastic the effects of biodiversity loss can be, getting information on what species are suffering, and where, can be tricky. Traditionally, maps may focus on the large-scale range of a species, and largely focus on vertebrate animals. A new study out last week in Ecological Applications, however, zooms in on the most likely suitable habitat for thousands of species—ranging from the Santa Cruz Island Cypress to the Twisted Dwarf Crayfish to Cockerell’s Bumble Bee, across the US.

What they found is that in the lower 48 states, there are nearly 300 species of at-risk creatures and plants that fall completely out of currently-protected wildlife zones. These protected areas make up a mere 13 percent of the continental US, or around 316 million acres (though the Biden administration has a lofty goal of getting that number up to 30 percent by 2030).

“When we think of biodiversity, we may reflect on tropical rainforests or coral reefs, where the richness of life is indeed staggering,” author Healy Hamilton, chief scientist at nonprofit NatureServe said in a release, “but our own country harbors globally significant biodiversity. The findings from the Map of Biodiversity Importance show us areas critical for preventing extinction across the nation.”

The most at-risk regions for imperiled species, the map shows, are across the California coast and the Southeast. At-risk freshwater invertebrates are most likely found in the Southeast, including two vulnerable mussel species that are only found in the Escambia River in Florida, and imperiled pollinators appear largely clumped on California’s coast and in the rust belt.

[Related: Conservation and ecology research tackles global issues without global input.]

Additionally, out of the over 800 species investigated, around 85 percent aren’t protected under the federal Endangered Species Act, 326 of which occur primarily on federal multiple-use lands. Around 66 percent of areas of unprotected biodiversity importance were found primarily on private land, and according to the new findings, around 90 percent of Americans live “within 30 miles of an area of high importance to biodiversity conservation,” said Sean T. O’Brien, President and CEO of NatureServe in the release.

“Most people are not aware that we have so many imperiled species in America, much less that almost all of us live close to a conservation hotspot for biodiversity,” O’Brien says.

But there are ways to protect biodiversity no matter where you are located: supporting local farms, planting native plants and bee-friendly flowers in your yard, reducing water use, and supporting local and responsible farmers are all a good way to start. And if you have the spare time, searching for ways to volunteer in local conservation efforts can also help rebuild and protect the land that houses our rarest and most at-risk flora and fauna.

MORE TO READ

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?

Instead, external pressures from environmental changes and human predation overwhelmed the species’ ability to adapt and recover, with additional factors such as disease outbreaks or short-term climatic perturbations possibly playing roles in their final disappearance .

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 are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

**Broader Megafaunal Extinction Patterns:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth was part of a broader pattern of late Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions, which saw the disappearance of many large mammals, including cave bears, giant ground sloths, and saber-toothed cats .

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A gold miner breaking through permafrost in the Canadian Yukon uncovered an almost completely intact baby woolly mammoth. The find, officials say, is the best-preserved specimen in North America to date and only the second full calf ever found, offering paleontologists a rare glimpse into the ancient mammals.

The 55-inch calf, which Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal,” lived approximately 30,000 years ago, and was entombed at about one month of age in the permafrost during the last ice age.

On June 21, Treadstone Mining employee Travis Mudry was cutting through a deep layer of permafrost with a tool known as a ripping attachment when he saw what he thought was the head of an ancient bison. A closer inspection revealed skin, eyes, and, most notably, a trunk.

Treadstone reached out to the Yukon government, and paleontologists from Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary advised the mining crew on how to preserve the find until they made it to the scene. Mudry carefully unearthed the mammoth in two sections, and the crew covered it in wet blankets and tarp. The timing was serendipitous, researchers told the CBC, as a storm came that could have washed out the find hit quickly after they arrived.

Paleontologists were stunned at the detail in the find. “The most incredible thing about Nun cho ga is the preservation … toe nails, hide intact, hair, trunk, intestines…” tweeted University of Calgary paleontologist Dan Shugar.

Officials and scientists will now begin the process of studying Nun cho ga as a means to not only glean a better understanding of the extinct species, but also gain a window onto other large game of its era like bison like wild horses and cave lions. “As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my life long dreams to come face to face with a real woolly mammoth,” said Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon Government, in a statement. “That dream came true today. Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.“

The team is also working closely with Yukon First Nations leaders. “This is a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on the next steps in the process for moving forward with these remains in a way that honors our traditions, culture, and laws,” stated Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Chief Roberta Joseph.

[Related: This startup wants to bring mammoths back to the Arctic]

The only other known near-complete woolly mammoth calf was uncovered in Siberia in 2007. Another partial infant found in North America dates back to an Alaskan gold mine in 1948.

MORE TO READ

Title:

Content:
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

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Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with woolly beasts

Woolly mammoths are evocative of a bygone era, when Earth was gripped within an Ice Age. Current knowledge places early mammoth ancestors in the Pliocene (2.58–5.33 million years ago, Ma) before their populations expanded in the Pleistocene (2.58 Ma–11,700 years ago, kyr). However, as climate changed, their numbers dwindled to isolated populations in modern Siberia and Alaska, until their last dated survival 4 kyr ago.

In the East Siberian Arctic (>70 °N), there is not only evidence of significant woolly mammoth populations, but also how humans interacted with them, the focus of new research in Quaternary Science Reviews.

Along the Berelekh River, Russia, a 'mammoth graveyard' can be found. Here, thousands of disarticulated bones, representing a minimum of 156 individual mammoths, found alongside an indicate the close proximity of these two communities, forming the Berelekh geoarchaeological complex.

Dr. Vladimir Pitulko, of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and colleagues aimed to assess the relationship between the 'mammoth graveyard' and the archaeological site through a re-examination of stratigraphic and paleogeographic data obtained in 2009, with new fieldwork focused on the left riverbanks where have readily yielded from their home in the sediment and appeared on the water's edge. Alongside them are remains of Pleistocene hare, Arctic fox and wolves, as well as soot and charcoal from hearths and worked mammoth tusks (one being an unfinished throwing spear).

The researchers suggest humans created these bone accumulations as a byproduct of the production of mammoth ivory technology, while hares may have been targeted for fur to produce winter clothing.

Notably, evidence of blowfly pupae activity on cavities in skulls and bones is indicative that the mammoth carcasses were added to the 'graveyard' de-fleshed. Indeed, there appears to be evidence of sorting of the bones, with only the most valuable transported to Berelekh from the area in which the mammoth was killed, leaving behind parts such as spinal columns, carpal ('hand') and tarsal ('foot') bones.

There are three radiocarbon dated peaks in woolly mammoth accumulation at 11.8, 12.2 and 12.4 kyr ago, which fall within known human settlement of the area (11.2–12.4 kyr ago) during the Bølling-Allerød deglacial, when the warmed and pollen evidence suggests the region became more arid.

Fluctuations in the abundance of mammoths in the 'graveyard' suggest human settlement of the area may also have changed through time (frequent occupation but not permanent), which the researchers attribute to on the floodplain permitting suitability for erecting campsites.

Radiocarbon dating of mammoth remains identifies their presence here pre-dating human settlement (beginning ~12.5 kyr ago), but also shows that humans remained in the area (until ~11.2 kyr ago) after mass mammoth remains accumulation declined (~11.8 kyr ago).

Given this, four possible causes are suggested by the scientists to explain such a significant mass accumulation of bones: 1) mass death by natural causes or human, 2) repeated group deaths in the same location, likely due to human predation, 3) concentration of remains by , such as river action, or 4) solely derived from human predation or scavenging from deceased carcasses.

However, the latter is considered to be the most likely to produce useful tools from ivory tusks, as well as meat to feed the community, as there is no evidence on the bones for a cause of mass death, radiocarbon ages do not cluster into multiple phases for recurrent death deposits and stream flows were unlikely to reach sufficient velocities to transport such heavy bones.

These findings are concurrent with mammoth remains at the Yana Paleolithic site, also in Siberia. Here, estimates suggest the 'graveyard' increased by 1–2 mammoths per year rather than a mass death event, a figure Dr. Pitulko and colleagues conclude could be similar or even higher for Berelekh.

This research is significant as it alters the previously-held belief that there was a lag of 50–80 years between mammoth bone accumulation from natural processes (such as deposition in flood channels) and , instead now defining a close relationship between the two over 700–800 years. Sadly, now that human-mammoth relationship has continued as ivory hunters have looted the site beyond further study.

More information: Vladimir V. Pitulko et al, From the Berelekh 'mammoth graveyard' to Berelekh geo-archaeological complex: Paleoenvironment, site formation processes, and human-mammoth relationships, Quaternary Science Reviews (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2024.108692

Journal information: Quaternary Science Reviews

© 2024 Science X Network

Citation: Siberia's 'mammoth graveyard' reveals 800-year human interactions with woolly beasts (2024, June 10) retrieved 10 June 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-06-siberia-mammoth-graveyard-reveals-year.html
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These extinctions were driven by the same combination of rapid climate change and increased human hunting and habitat alteration .

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?

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?

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 loss of keystone species like the mammoth had cascading effects on ecosystems, altering vegetation patterns and reducing biodiversity .

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A gold miner breaking through permafrost in the Canadian Yukon uncovered an almost completely intact baby woolly mammoth. The find, officials say, is the best-preserved specimen in North America to date and only the second full calf ever found, offering paleontologists a rare glimpse into the ancient mammals.

The 55-inch calf, which Trʼondëk Hwëchʼin Elders named Nun cho ga, meaning “big baby animal,” lived approximately 30,000 years ago, and was entombed at about one month of age in the permafrost during the last ice age.

On June 21, Treadstone Mining employee Travis Mudry was cutting through a deep layer of permafrost with a tool known as a ripping attachment when he saw what he thought was the head of an ancient bison. A closer inspection revealed skin, eyes, and, most notably, a trunk.

Treadstone reached out to the Yukon government, and paleontologists from Yukon Geological Survey and University of Calgary advised the mining crew on how to preserve the find until they made it to the scene. Mudry carefully unearthed the mammoth in two sections, and the crew covered it in wet blankets and tarp. The timing was serendipitous, researchers told the CBC, as a storm came that could have washed out the find hit quickly after they arrived.

Paleontologists were stunned at the detail in the find. “The most incredible thing about Nun cho ga is the preservation … toe nails, hide intact, hair, trunk, intestines…” tweeted University of Calgary paleontologist Dan Shugar.

Officials and scientists will now begin the process of studying Nun cho ga as a means to not only glean a better understanding of the extinct species, but also gain a window onto other large game of its era like bison like wild horses and cave lions. “As an ice age paleontologist, it has been one of my life long dreams to come face to face with a real woolly mammoth,” said Grant Zazula, a paleontologist with the Yukon Government, in a statement. “That dream came true today. Nun cho ga is beautiful and one of the most incredible mummified ice age animals ever discovered in the world.“

The team is also working closely with Yukon First Nations leaders. “This is a remarkable recovery for our First Nation, and we look forward to collaborating with the Yukon government on the next steps in the process for moving forward with these remains in a way that honors our traditions, culture, and laws,” stated Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in Chief Roberta Joseph.

[Related: This startup wants to bring mammoths back to the Arctic]

The only other known near-complete woolly mammoth calf was uncovered in Siberia in 2007. Another partial infant found in North America dates back to an Alaskan gold mine in 1948.

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**Paleoecological and Archaeological Insights:** Recent paleontological discoveries, such as the well-preserved remains of a baby woolly mammoth in the Yukon, provide valuable information about mammoth biology and ecology, helping researchers reconstruct the environmental conditions and pressures that led to their extinction .

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Rapid Reductions In Greenhouse Gas Emissions Are Critical For Avoiding A Major Mass Extinction Of Ocean Species

As humanity's greenhouse gas emissions continue to warm the world's oceans, marine biodiversity could be on track to plummet within the next few centuries to levels not seen since the extinction of the dinosaurs, writes Morgan Kelly for Princeton University.

A new study by Princeton University researchers modeled future marine biodiversity under different projected greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, comparing the results with Earth’s big mass extinctions. They found that if emissions are not curbed, the extinction rate for marine species could double by around 2100.

The researchers combined existing data on marine species with models of climate change to predict how changes in habitat conditions will affect the survival of sea animals around the globe over the next few centuries. They then compared their model to the magnitude of past mass extinctions captured in the fossil record, especially to the End-Permian Extinction - Earth's deadliest extinction event so far. The fossil record shows that more than 250 million years ago volcanic gas emissions caused ocean temperatures to increase and oxygen availability to drop, leading to a mass extinction claiming more than 80 percent of Earth's marine species.

Water temperature and oxygen availability are two key factors that will change as the climate warms due to human activity.

Marine animals have physiological mechanisms that allow them to cope with environmental changes, but only up to a point. The researchers found that polar species are more likely to go globally extinct if climate warming occurs because they will have no suitable habitats to move to. Tropical marine species will likely fare better because they have traits that allow them to cope with the warm, low-oxygen waters of the tropics. As waters north and south of the tropics warm, these species may be able to migrate to newly suitable habitats. The equatorial ocean, however, is already so warm and low in oxygen that further increases in temperature - and an accompanying decrease in oxygen - might make it locally uninhabitable for many species.

Together with overfishing and pollution, climate change could so become the leading factor in the extinction of species. Tropical waters would experience the greatest loss of biodiversity, while polar species are at the highest risk of extinction, the authors reported.

"Extreme warming would lead to climate-driven extinctions that, near the end of the century, will rival all current human stressors combined," so the study's key result according to first author Justin Penn, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Geosciences.

The study found, however, that reversing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the risk of extinction by more than 70 percent.

"The silver lining is that the future isn't written in stone," says Penn. "The extinction magnitude that we found depends strongly on how much carbon-dioxide we emit moving forward. There's still enough time to change the trajectory of carbon-dioxid emissions and prevent the magnitude of warming that would cause this mass extinction."

The paper, "Avoiding ocean mass extinction from climate warming," is published in the journal Science.

Archaeological evidence, including the use of mammoth ivory for tools, ornaments, and even the oldest known decorated jewelry, highlights the cultural significance of mammoths to early humans .

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World Environment Day: If climate change does not stop, more than 3 million people will die every year

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as on earth green house gas Emissions are increasing, the pace of climate change is accelerating. Populations around the world are being severely affected by extreme weather and climate change events. For example, in 2022, persistent drought in East Africa, record-breaking rains in Pakistan, and record-breaking heatwaves in China and Europe affected hundreds of millions of people. Because of which problems like threat to food security and mass migration came to the fore.

Big threat to the creatures of the earth

A study published in the journal Nature states that we are posing a great risk to our future and to every living organism on earth. Global warming has increased to such an extent that there has been a threat to the species of many organisms. This study group, called the Earth Commission, which includes more than 40 scientists from all over the world, has concluded that melting of glaciers, excessive carbon dioxide dissolved in ocean water i.e. ocean acidification, heat wave, floods and droughts can cause climate change. It is full of hallmarks.

India heatwave victim

India and Pakistan have been suffering from heatwaves for the last few years due to which human population had to face massive hardships and it has also affected the supply of wheat globally. According to a rapid attribution analysis conducted by an international team of the world’s leading climate scientists, the likelihood of such a severe heatwave has increased nearly 30 times due to climate change caused by harmful human activities. If the situation remains like this, then the day is not far when in the next few years, 2.40 billion of the world’s population of about eight billion will be facing severe water crisis. Antarctic sea ice has melted to record levels and the melting of some European glaciers is beyond count.

1.2 billion climate refugees by 2050

According to the WMO State of the Global Climate Report 2023, dangerous climate and weather-related events promoted the displacement of people throughout the past year. According to a World Bank report, by 2050, climate change could prompt 216 million people to migrate from one place to another within their own countries. By 2050, there could be 1.2 billion climate refugees in the world.

Many animal species on the verge of extinction

A new study in Nature Ecology and Evolution, led by UCL Research, has revealed that due to climate change, many species of animals, plants, animals and birds on earth are being pushed towards sudden extinction. These species can suddenly die when global warming rises up to 2.5 degree Celsius. They are unable to thrive in such a hot environment and are getting destroyed. The team analyzed data from more than 35,000 species of animals (including mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, corals, fish, whales and plankton), seagrass data from every continent and 2100 climate projections including ocean basins.

There will be more than 3 million deaths every year

According to the Lancet Countdown 2022, if climate change is not stopped, by the end of this century, 3.4 million more people (in addition to the current deaths) will die every year. In such a situation, the latest synthesis report of IPCC warns us that climate change is not only a threat to humans but also to the welfare of the entire planet. This report tells us that we are standing very close to an increase of one and a half degree Celsius in global temperature and this increase is not safe for our planet and the people living here.

(The author is an environmentalist)

World Environment Day: Balanced and equitable way of environmental protection

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Colossal Expands Research Grants As It Tries To Revive Extinct Species

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Dallas-based “de-extinction” startup Colossal said today it is adding $7.5 million in research grants in an effort to speed the process of recreating the DNA of long-dead species such as the wooly mammoth and thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian tiger.

The company and its partners have already made progress with the wooly mammoth, which during the last Ice Age roamed the Arctic tundra of Siberia and beyond. Researchers tied to the company have issued a preprint research report about their work on modified elephant stem cells that they believe could be further manipulated to bring to life the elephant’s furry northern cousin. That preprint has not yet been peer reviewed by an academic journal.

“We believe that to support a biodiverse future, we must facilitate ancient DNA research across the world,” said Colossal’s recently named Chief Science Officer Beth Shapiro in a release. “Ancient DNA is the world’s discovery sandbox and it holds millions of yet to be discovered secrets that we can use to improve our planet’s future.”

The additional $7.5 million will be used by existing research partners, as well as adding more researchers, building a larger network of university partners, and creating a tech hub for exchanging research findings. Recipients include researchers at Stockholm University, the University of Potsdam, the University of California - Santa Cruz, the University of Alaska, McMaster University, University of Copenhagen, and Rowan University, among others.

The company also recently announced a partnership with James Reed, the co-director/-writer of the Oscar-winning 2020 Netflix NFLX documentary My Octopus Teacher, and his Underdog Films to create a multi-year documentary series following Colossal’s efforts to reverse-engineer the DNA of extinct species. Sophie Todd (Drive To Survive) will be showrunner.

“When we launched (in 2021), we had 200-plus production companies and directors contact us,” said Colossal CEO Ben Lamm in an interview. “We thought it was important to document this work for science. James Reed was a really great fit, not just because he'd done My Octopus Teacher and won an Oscar. When you do something big and bold, we believe it's important to be transparent and document it. There’s nothing more transparent than letting cameras in. I've never done that before.”

Other extinct species being researched include a giant deer (Megaloceros) and cave hyena that each once roamed Europe, American cheetahs, giant short-faced bears, and Steller’s sea cows, as well as flightless birds such as dodos, moas and giant auks.

“We do believe there's a huge opportunity not just to re-wild (extinct) species, but also a huge opportunity around biodiversity protection,” Lamm said. “We even saw some interest in carbon credits” that could be developed by helping rescue endangered modern species.

“There’s been a lot of data about forest elephants and carbon sequestration,” Lamm said. “There’s incredible data about wolves in North America. As long as you're thinking about that with right lenses, those (kinds of restoration programs) will be quantifiable as carbon credits.”

Lamm said Colossal’s ancient DNA initiatives have paid off already in areas such as AI-fueled algorithmic analysis, embryology, and comparative genomics that have applications far beyond extinct animals. In particular, the researchers said they’re hopeful the breakthroughs can be used to save endangered and threatened species whose shrinking gene pools make it difficult to sustain populations.

The company is researching artificial wombs that could bear some of the revived species without endangering existing related species.

One of the company’s biggest achievements so far is in “multiplex editing,” basically editing genomes in more than one segment at a time, accelerating what is a painstaking and precise process, Lamm said. That work has potential applications for researchers trying to develop drugs to cure or ease many genetic diseases that affect humans.

The company also already spun off one for-profit company, FormBio, a computational biology platform that leverages artificial intelligence in genetic analysis.

While the tools the company has developed are free for conservation and research groups focused on ancient DNA, researchers and companies focused in other areas will have to pay to use them, Lamm said.

The company has faced some controversy over its plans, not least because of the unlikely but scary outcome suggested in various Jurassic Park and Jurassic World movies and Michael Crichton’s original 1990 book about revivified dinosaurs running amok (the Colossal work is focused on extinct mammal and bird species, not dinosaurs).

Others have questioned whether the prodigious sums involved in the work are the best use of resources, and whether, say, a revivified wooly mammoth is actually a woolly mammoth or some hybrid creation with no natural ecosystem to sustain a population of the creatures. It has, after all, been 15,000 years or so since the Ice Age blanketed huge parts of Eurasia and North America with glaciers.

“We really have to think about whether re-wilding a critically endangered species makes sense,” Lamm acknowledged. “You have to think about how these particular groups can work with nature. I think we need to think about how do we live truly integrated with them. The pushback in Tasmania (where the thylacine once was an apex predator) is the logging industry.”

There, the company is working with the loggers, local politicians, non-governmental entities, community groups and others to develop a plan for a possible re-introduction of the thylacine on the Australian island. That process may take a decade to work out, Lamm said.

The three-year-old Colossal has labs of its own in the Boston area, where Harvard-based Colossal co-founder George Church works, and in Melbourne, Australia, Lamm said. The company is also building out a 45,000-sq.-ft. lab in the Dallas medical district around Parkland Hospital.

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The presence of mammoth bones and tusks in construction and tool-making further underscores their importance in prehistoric societies .

**Comparative Extinction Events and Modern Implications:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth aligns with historical patterns where climate change has been a major driver of biodiversity loss.

**Comparative Extinction Events and Modern Implications:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth aligns with historical patterns where climate change has been a major driver of biodiversity loss.

**Comparative Extinction Events and Modern Implications:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth aligns with historical patterns where climate change has been a major driver of biodiversity loss.

For example, the Late Permian Mass Extinction was caused by global warming, ocean acidification, and ozone depletion, resulting in the loss of over 90% of marine species and 75% of terrestrial species .

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Content: A study of the dietary habits and hunting strategies of early humans in the Middle Paleolithic.

© TISARP
The roughly 81,000 to 45,000 year-old excavation site in the southern Zagros Mountains, Iran.
In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers from the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (SHEP) at the University of Tübingen show that early humans of the Middle Paleolithic had a more varied diet than previously assumed. The analysis of a site in the Zagros Mountains in Iran reveals that around 81,000 to 45,000 years ago, the local hominins hunted ungulates as well as tortoises and carnivores. Birds may also have been on the menu.

As early as the Upper Paleolithic, the earliest period of the Paleolithic, the ancestors of modern humans effectively hunted small and large mammals. "According to various studies, the hominins of the subsequent Middle Paleolithic - the period between 300,000 and 45,000 years ago - fed primarily on ungulates. However, there is increasing evidence that, at least occasionally, tortoises, birds, hares, fish, and carnivorous mammals were also on the menu of Neanderthals and their relatives," explains Mario Mata-González, first author of the new study and a doctoral student at the University of Tübingen, and he continues, "Reconstructing the dietary habits of early hominins is one of the main objectives of archeozoological studies, which shed light on the way our ancestors adapted to and interacted with different environments."

Together with other SHEP researchers, Mata-González has carried out the first comprehensive and systematic dietary analysis at a Late Pleistocene site in the southern Zagros Mountains with an age around 81,000 to 45,000 years. "Not only are the Zagros Mountains the largest mountain range in Iran, but they are also considered a key geographical region for the study of human evolution in Southwest Asia during the Middle Paleolithic, in particular due to their heterogeneous topography and great environmental diversity," he adds.

© N. Conard
The findings from the Ghar-e Boof site reveal that the diet of the local hominins included carnivores and tortoises, among others.
To date, archeozoological finds from the mountains have been almost exclusively limited to ungulates. However, the results from the Ghar-e Boof site show that the diet of the local hominins also included carnivorous mammals and turtles. "More than 75 percent of the fauna at Ghar-e Boof consists of ungulates - from small to very large species. We mainly found remains of wild goats (Capra aegagrus) and gazelles (Gazella sp.). But we were also able to document smaller numbers of wild boar (Sus scrofa), red deer (Cervus elaphus), horses (Equus sp.), and wild cattle (Bos primigenius)," explains the doctoral student from Tübingen, and he continues, "In addition to ungulates, tortoises (Testudo sp.) are the most frequent species whose fossils we were able to recover from the approximately 18-square-meter large excavation area."

The research team was also able to identify bones of various bird species and a few remains of carnivores, such as a red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and a large predatory cat - probably a leopard (Panthera cf. pardus). Cuts and traces of processing on some of the fossil bones point to early humans as the originators. According to the study, the tortoises were roasted in their shells before being eaten - this is how the researchers interpret the scorch marks on the external surfaces of the fossil tortoise shells.

The study's last author, Prof. Nicholas J. Conard of SHEP, concludes, "The faunal remains from Ghar-e Boof are the first evidence that small game animals such as tortoises and birds as well as carnivores were utilized by hominins in the southern Zagros Mountains. Even if some of these species were consumed only sporadically, our findings show that the hominins of the Zagros region in the Middle Paleolithic had a more varied diet than previously assumed. This is consistent with findings in other parts of Eurasia."

Press release of the Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung and University of Tübingen

Publication:

Mata-González, M., Starkovich, B.M., Zeidi, M. et al. Evidence of diverse animal exploitation during the Middle Paleolithic at Ghar-e Boof (southern Zagros). Sci Rep 13, 19006 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-45974-8

Massive volcanic eruptions over the past 260 million years have also triggered extreme greenhouse warming and mass extinctions .

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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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What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

These events illustrate how rapid environmental changes can disrupt ecosystems and lead to widespread species loss .

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Content: Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius)

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

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

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

Dodo (Raphus cucullatus)

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

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

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

Thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus)

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

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

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

Great auk (Pinguinus impennis)

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

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

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

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

Xerces butterfly (Glaucopsyche xerces)

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

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

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

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

Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)

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

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

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

Golden toad (Incilius periglenes)

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

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

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

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

Baiji (Lipotes vexillifer)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Megan ShersbyNaturalist, writer and content creator
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According to most recent research, what is the primary cause of wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

Current studies warn that ongoing anthropogenic climate change is accelerating extinction risks, with projections indicating that if greenhouse gas emissions continue unchecked, mass extinctions comparable to those in Earth’s history could occur, particularly affecting species with limited habitat options .

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Decorated ivory 'pendant' carved from mammoth tusk is oldest example of ornate jewellery in Eurasia, archaeologists say

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About 41,500 years ago, a Stone Age artist in Europe carved an oval-shaped object covered in dots out of the tusk of a woolly mammoth.

When placed together, the two 4.5-centimetre-long incomplete fragments appear to make up a pendant, according to an international team of archaeologists.

"When you see the piece, it is amazing," said Sahra Talamo of the University of Bologna.

The series of dots on the two fragments of ivory may count the number of animals hunted, or keep track of the Moon or Sun.

Whatever their meaning, the piece is the earliest-known decorated jewellery created by modern humans in Eurasia, according to Professor Talamo and colleagues in a study published today in Scientific Reports.

"It is the first time ever that a pendant or something that is considered symbolic behaviour from Homo sapiens has been directly dated [in Eurasia]," Professor Talamo said.

But while the team believe the object is jewellery, Australian expert Michelle Langley thinks it may be something even more intriguing.

"I think that's a fragment of a repaired boomerang," Dr Langley said.

Sifting through layers of history

The fragments were discovered in 2010 from the Stajnia Cave in southern Poland, along with a 6cm-long awl — a needle-like tool used to make holes, crafted from horse bone.

The cave contains layers of Neanderthal remains as well as tools made by modern humans.

When the pendant fragments and awl were first discovered, it was thought they might have been created by Neanderthals, Professor Talamo said.

The pendant and awl were found alongside Neanderthal teeth, but the layers of the site were so mixed up no-one was sure how old they were.

"The site was a mess," Professor Talamo said.

"The only way to attribute this [object] to Neanderthal or Homo sapiens was to directly date them."

Radiocarbon dating of small samples of collagen taken from the ivory showed the artefacts were between 42,000 and 37,000 years old.

While older jewellery has been found elsewhere in Eurasia, such as carved bear teeth in 46,000-year-old sediment in Bacho Kiro Cave in Bulgaria, it is not engraved with patterns like the ivory from Poland.

What does this tell us about early humans in Eurasia?

The date of the artefacts coincides with the push of our species, Homo sapiens, into Europe at a time when Neanderthals had almost disappeared.

While Neanderthals did make jewellery out of bone, the pattern on the ornament is distinctly Homo sapien.

Professor Talamo said there were almost certainly older examples of the dotted style on artefacts in Africa.

But just where and when modern humans brought this style of art with them into Europe is still a mystery.

Ivory ornaments with dots depicting animals, such as lions, fish and a horse, and thought to be about 40,000 years old, have been found in shelters associated with Homo sapiens in France and Germany.

But they have not been directly dated, Professor Talamo said.

"Most of the sites where these figurines or flutes or other things were found … were  excavated long ago, so that means that most of the time the layers are contaminated."

Professor Talamo said the only way to get a better picture of how the people and their art spread throughout Europe would be to directly date the collection of patterned objects.

"Nobody wants to give such beautiful jewellery for dating, because radiocarbon dating is a destructive method."

But it's much better than it used to be, said Professor Talamo, who developed a method to ensure only a tiny amount — about 1/8th of a teaspoon — of collagen was removed from the artefact.

Jewellery or a boomerang?

As they say, the meaning of art is in the eye of the beholder.

With its creator long gone, it is hard to know why they made the artefact.

"We can only suppose [what it was] based on our way of thinking right now, but their way of thinking was totally different," Professor Talamo said.

"It could be anything, but we like to say it is like [a pendant], because this is our imagination on things," she said, adding that as an Italian, she had a soft spot for jewellery.

But as soon as Dr Langley, an archaeologist at Griffith University who was not involved in the study, saw the images, she was reminded of artefacts found in Australia.

"The perforations are how Indigenous Australians repair a crack in their hardwood boomerangs," she said.

Often painted and engraved, boomerangs are also considered portable art.

"If I was them I'd be having a close look at that use-wear on the curved edge and comparing that with boomerang stuff."

While we think of boomerangs as being Australian, they have been found elsewhere in the world.

In fact, an ivory boomerang dated to around 23,000 years was found in the 1980s at a site not too far away in Poland.

"Ornaments are cool, but if you've got a 41,000-year-old piece of an ivory boomerang, that's more interesting, especially if they are repairing the object the same way they do here," Dr Langley said.

It is an interesting idea, said Professor Talamo, who's also in charge of studying the ivory boomerang found at the other site.

"I simply do not know; it could be, why not? Even if I prefer to dream about jewellery rather than a piece of boomerang," she said.

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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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The present rate of species extinction is estimated to be 35 times faster than historical norms, primarily due to habitat destruction, climate disruption, and human activities .

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Content: An international team of researchers suggests that low solar activity and the reversal of the magnetic field together may have cataclysmic effects that can spell the end of life. In a study recently published in the journal Science, the researchers detailed how the decline of the archaic Neanderthals and extinction of megafauna may be linked to the solar minimum a long time ago and the Laschamp excursion, a period around 42,000 years ago in which Earth’s magnetic field temporarily flipped.

Re-examining the impact of a magnetic field reversal

Earth’s magnetic field serves as a protective shield against harmful cosmic radiation. But when it flips, it becomes weaker and leaves the planet exposed to higher levels of radiation. This is the scenario for roughly 1,000 years during Laschamp.

Past studies suggest that this event had little impact on the planet. But according to the researchers, that’s possibly because the focus was not on the period during which the poles were actually shifting.

The researchers then performed radiocarbon analyses of the rings of ancient kauri trees in New Zealand to reevaluate the impact of Laschamp. This allowed them to track over time the rise in atmospheric levels of carbon-14 that was produced by increased cosmic radiation. The researchers then compared these carbon levels with numerous geologic records from all over the world to date significant atmospheric changes around the time.

Analysis showed that an array of major environmental changes happened at the same time carbon-14 levels peaked. Some of those changes include a massive growth of the North American ice sheet, a shift in the western Pacific’s tropical rain belts and a drying out in Australia, said Chris Turney, a professor of earth science at the University of New South Wales and one of the study researchers. (Related: Are Earth’s magnetic poles about to flip? University researcher warns the reversal is approaching.)

Ice core records also suggest that dips in solar activity, known as the grand solar minima, coincided with Laschamp. Such dips can also have significant effects on the planet as the sun becomes unstable during those periods – it can emit solar flares and coronal mass ejections that bring higher levels of radiation to Earth.

The researchers then used a model to see what would happen if solar activity plummeted at the same time as the magnetic field disappeared. The model showed that the combination of these two events might have depleted the ozone layer and triggered climate shifts, electrical storms and widespread auroras.

The team suspects that these environmental changes potentially accelerated the growth of ice sheets and contributed to the extinction of Australian megafauna and the gradual decline of the Neanderthals. They also linked these changes to the increased use of caves as shelter and the emergence of red ocher handprints for cave art and sunscreen.

“It probably would have seemed like the end of days,” Turney said.

That those seemingly random cosmic events 42,000 years ago appear to be connected led the researchers to call this intricate mosaic of a period the “Adams Event.” The name is a tribute to science fiction writer Douglas Adams, who wrote in his book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” that the number “42” is the answer to the mysteries of the universe.

What happens if the magnetic field flips now?

Some experts believe that Earth’s magnetic field may flip relatively soon. This protective shield already weakened by around nine percent for the past 170 years, and the presence of the South Atlantic Anomaly – a weak spot in the magnetic field just above South America and the South Atlantic Ocean, which has been growing as of late – is further stoking concerns.

If the magnetic field reverses, satellite networks and power grids will be the most affected. Even now when the magnetic field still mostly stable, solar storms are already damaging satellites, causing power outages and interrupting radio communications. In March 1989, for example, a coronal mass ejection triggered a widespread power failure that cut off electrical supply to over six million people in Canada and across the northeastern U.S. for nine hours.

A magnetic field flip can also affect humans and animals. Increased levels of radiation can potentially increase skin cancer cases while animals like bees, whales and turtles that rely on geomagnetism for navigation might not be able to cope with the reversal.

It’s clear that the reversal of Earth’s magnetic field poses a great threat to humanity. Learn more about potential disaster scenarios during a magnetic field flip and other catastrophic events at Disaster.news.

Virgilio Marin

Sources include:

StrangeSounds.org

TheGuardian.com

TheConversation.com

USAToday.com

LiveScience.com

Space.com

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The loss of biodiversity, including keystone species like the mammoth, has profound implications for ecosystem stability and human survival .

**Interconnected Effects and Ecosystem Dynamics:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth exemplifies how the interplay between climate change and human hunting can create compounded effects on vulnerable species.

**Interconnected Effects and Ecosystem Dynamics:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth exemplifies how the interplay between climate change and human hunting can create compounded effects on vulnerable species.

**Interconnected Effects and Ecosystem Dynamics:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth exemplifies how the interplay between climate change and human hunting can create compounded effects on vulnerable species.

As climate change reduced their habitat and food sources, human hunting further pressured already declining populations, hastening their extinction .

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Content: Woolly Mammoth Bones Unearthed in Austrian Wine Cellar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mammoth-hunters who tracked their prey to ... Swindon

Remains found in a quarry in Wiltshire astonished even David Attenborough, the part-time palaeontologists who discovered them tell Rosamund Urwin

Sally Hollingworth got goosebumps when she first held a Neanderthal axe that had not been touched in about 215,000 years. An amateur fossil-hunter, she found the axe in April 2017 alongside the bones of ice-age mammoths at a quarry near Swindon that she was exploring with her husband, Neville.

“I realised I was the first person to hold this since whoever dropped it,” she recalls. “Who were they? Why did they drop it? Were they being chased by an angry mammoth? I was holding an object that had never been touched by modern humans. It blows your mind.”

The axe was part of one of the most extraordinary archaeological finds, which is coming to light more than four years later with a BBC1 documentary presented

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

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

How did climate change affect mammoth' habitat?

How did humans contribute to the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What environmental factors contributed to the wooly mammoth extinction?

The disappearance of mammoths, which were keystone herbivores, likely led to shifts in vegetation patterns and altered the structure and biodiversity of tundra ecosystems .

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Content: Woolly Mammoth Bones Unearthed in Austrian Wine Cellar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mammoth-hunters who tracked their prey to ... Swindon

Remains found in a quarry in Wiltshire astonished even David Attenborough, the part-time palaeontologists who discovered them tell Rosamund Urwin

Sally Hollingworth got goosebumps when she first held a Neanderthal axe that had not been touched in about 215,000 years. An amateur fossil-hunter, she found the axe in April 2017 alongside the bones of ice-age mammoths at a quarry near Swindon that she was exploring with her husband, Neville.

“I realised I was the first person to hold this since whoever dropped it,” she recalls. “Who were they? Why did they drop it? Were they being chased by an angry mammoth? I was holding an object that had never been touched by modern humans. It blows your mind.”

The axe was part of one of the most extraordinary archaeological finds, which is coming to light more than four years later with a BBC1 documentary presented

The cascading ecological effects highlight the interconnectedness of species and their environments and underscore the profound influence humans have had on prehistoric ecosystems .

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.

Title:

Content: Subscription Notification
We have noticed that there is an issue with your subscription billing details. Please update your billing details here
Please update your billing information
The subscription details associated with this account need to be updated. Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your subscription.
Your subscription will end shortly
Please update your billing details here to continue enjoying your access to the most informative and considered journalism in the UK.

Mammoth-hunters who tracked their prey to ... Swindon

Remains found in a quarry in Wiltshire astonished even David Attenborough, the part-time palaeontologists who discovered them tell Rosamund Urwin

Sally Hollingworth got goosebumps when she first held a Neanderthal axe that had not been touched in about 215,000 years. An amateur fossil-hunter, she found the axe in April 2017 alongside the bones of ice-age mammoths at a quarry near Swindon that she was exploring with her husband, Neville.

“I realised I was the first person to hold this since whoever dropped it,” she recalls. “Who were they? Why did they drop it? Were they being chased by an angry mammoth? I was holding an object that had never been touched by modern humans. It blows your mind.”

The axe was part of one of the most extraordinary archaeological finds, which is coming to light more than four years later with a BBC1 documentary presented

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

What are the causes of the wooly mammoth extinction?

**Summary of Causes:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth was driven by a combination of rapid climate warming at the end of the last Ice Age, which transformed their habitats and reduced food availability, and increased hunting pressure from expanding human populations [36d196bf_1

**Summary of Causes:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth was driven by a combination of rapid climate warming at the end of the last Ice Age, which transformed their habitats and reduced food availability, and increased hunting pressure from expanding human populations [36d196bf_1

**Summary of Causes:** The extinction of the woolly mammoth was driven by a combination of rapid climate warming at the end of the last Ice Age, which transformed their habitats and reduced food availability, and increased hunting pressure from expanding human populations [36d196bf_1