The human factor in mammoth extinction

Climate Change, Humans, and the Extinction of the Woolly Mammoth

Woolly mammoths inhabited Eurasia and North America from late Middle Pleistocene (300 ky BP [300,000 years before present]), surviving through different climatic cycles until they vanished in the Holocene (3.6 ky BP). The debate about why the Late Quaternary extinctions occurred has centred upon environmental and human-induced effects, or a combination of both. However, testing these two hypoth...

Pattern of extinction of the woolly mammoth in Beringia

Extinction of the woolly mammoth in Beringia has long been subject to research and speculation. Here we use a new geo-referenced database of radiocarbon-dated evidence to show that mammoths were abundant in the open-habitat of Marine Isotope Stage 3 (∼45-30 ka). During the Last Glacial Maximum (∼25-20 ka), northern populations declined while those in interior Siberia increased. Northern mammoth...

Genetic Structure and Extinction of the Woolly Mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius

The interval since circa 50 Ka has been a period of significant species extinctions among the large mammal fauna. However, the relative roles of an increasing human presence and a synchronous series of complex environmental changes in these extinctions have yet to be fully resolved. Recent analyses of fossil material from Beringia have clarified our understanding of the spatiotemporal pattern o...

Genomic Analysis of the Process Leading up to the Extinction of the Woolly Mammoth

THE ECOLOGY OF DE-EXTINCTION A mammoth undertaking: harnessing insight from functional ecology to shape de-extinction priority setting

A mammoth undertaking: harnessing insight from functional ecology to shape de-extinction priority setting Douglas J. McCauley*, Molly Hardesty-Moore, Benjamin S. Halpern and Hillary S. Young Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA; Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 9...