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How Mammoths Lost The Extinction Lottery
Nature ^ | November 2, 2011 | Ewen Callaway

Posted on 11/04/2011 7:25:31 PM PDT by SunkenCiv

Woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos and other large animals driven to extinction since the last ice age each succumbed to a different lethal mix of circumstances...

Researchers who studied the fate of six species of 'megafauna' over the past 50,000 years found that climate change and habitat loss were involved in many of the extinctions, with humans playing a part in some cases but not others. But there was no clear pattern to explain why the animals died off, and it proved impossible to predict from habitat or genetic diversity which species would go extinct and which would survive.

"It almost seems like it's a random process," says Eske Willerslev, a palaeo-geneticist at the University of Copenhagen who led the study published online today in Nature1. "If you ran the whole experiment again, we would have woolly mammoths and no reindeer, so Santa would drag his sleigh with woolly mammoths."

...Some scientists, noting that modern humans were spreading throughout the world around this time, envisaged a blitzkrieg in which technologically savvy people hunted these animals to extinction. The end of an ice age and the habitat changes it wrought led other researchers to lay the blame on climate...

The researchers created a series of snapshots of the European, Asian and North American ranges of these animals (drawn from climate records and hundreds of fossils) and a rough approximation of their population size (based on ancient mitochondrial DNA sequences) between 42,000 and 6,000 thousand years ago...

The team found no way to predict the future extinction of a species, based on either an animal's genetic diversity or the size of its range.

(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...


TOPICS: History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: catastrophism; globalwarminghoax; godsgravesglyphs; greennewdeal; helixmakemineadouble; mammoth; mammoths; mastodon; mastodons; megafauna
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During the last ice age, 150 genera of large animals roamed the planet. [George Teichmann]

How Mammoths Lost The Extinction Lottery

1 posted on 11/04/2011 7:25:32 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
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The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization

by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith


2 posted on 11/04/2011 7:27:21 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: Renfield; wildbill; decimon; gleeaikin; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1010RD; 21twelve; ..

 GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach
Thanks Renfield.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.


3 posted on 11/04/2011 7:27:35 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: SunkenCiv
"If you ran the whole experiment again, we would have woolly mammoths and no reindeer, so Santa would drag his sleigh with woolly mammoths."

Paleo-geneticists are always obsessing on the old man in the sky who makes miracles happen. And they call it science.

4 posted on 11/04/2011 7:29:22 PM PDT by ClearCase_guy (I won't vote for Romney. I won't vote for Perry.)
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5 posted on 11/04/2011 7:29:39 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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Looking For Donors


Click The Pic

Are You One?

6 posted on 11/04/2011 7:30:57 PM PDT by DJ MacWoW (America! The wolves are here! What will you do?)
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To: SunkenCiv
. But there was no clear pattern to explain why the animals died off, and it proved impossible to predict from habitat or genetic diversity which species would go extinct and which would survive.

Maybe "Wooly" had something to do with it.

7 posted on 11/04/2011 7:31:15 PM PDT by Mike Darancette (999er for Cain.)
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To: Mike Darancette
Maybe "Wooly" had something to do with it.

My thought exactly! Uncanny, eh?

8 posted on 11/04/2011 7:37:41 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: SunkenCiv
"If you ran the whole experiment again, we would have woolly mammoths and no reindeer, so Santa would drag his sleigh with woolly mammoths."

And ~flying~ wooly mammoths, at that. Yeesh... And you thought that ~birds~ pooping on your freshly washed car was annoying...

9 posted on 11/04/2011 7:40:38 PM PDT by Ramius (personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: Mike Darancette

We find frozen woolies left and right up North. I’m sure there are a few running around labs worldwide.


10 posted on 11/04/2011 7:41:59 PM PDT by txhurl (Did you want to talk or fish? Or feed the fish?)
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To: SunkenCiv

One of my favorite pieces in my knife collection is a Benchmade Gold class folder, with a Damascus blade and a pure white mammoth ivory handle. Hand made, limited edition of 100.

There’s lots of mammoth ivory out there, but most is yellowish, with heavy graining and striping. This stuff is white and smooth. It’s simply breathtaking. And to think how old that ivory is... Staggering.


11 posted on 11/04/2011 7:55:41 PM PDT by Ramius (personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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To: SunkenCiv
Researchers who studied the fate of six species of 'megafauna' over the past 50,000 years found that climate change and habitat loss were involved in many of the extinctions, with humans playing a part in some cases but not others.

I was watching a show about this the other day and they were saying that climate change was unlikely to have killed the giant armadillo. It survived for more than a million years through multiple ice ages and the wide climatic swings between the. I turn around the next day and I see a "climatologist" declaring that animals are all going to become extinct because of global warming.
12 posted on 11/04/2011 7:57:15 PM PDT by cripplecreek (A vote for Amnesty is a vote for a permanent Democrat majority. ..Choose well.)
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To: cripplecreek

Whst do we call it when an existing scientific theory is unable to explain phenemna that we know exists?

It means that the present theory is wrong.


13 posted on 11/04/2011 8:05:15 PM PDT by BenKenobi (Honkeys for Herman! 10 percent is enough for God; 9 percent is enough for government)
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To: Ramius

What is the value(monetary) of a knife like that?


14 posted on 11/04/2011 8:09:27 PM PDT by EEGator
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To: Ramius

A great many 19th c billiard balls were manufactured out of mammoth ivory. And no, I don’t have a citation for that. :’)


15 posted on 11/04/2011 8:14:03 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: cripplecreek

They went extinct because of the Occupy Ice Age jokers.


16 posted on 11/04/2011 8:14:41 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (It's never a bad time to FReep this link -- https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: SunkenCiv

I gather that wooly mammoth were also very limited in genetic diversity.

A biological theory, the “island theory”, is that when a species are broken up on different isolated islands, they first diversify and become specialized to their individual islands, eventually becoming unique species, but are condemned to dying out because they become both over-specialized and inbred.

The same basic thing may have happened to wooly mammoths, by distance between herds.


17 posted on 11/04/2011 8:17:02 PM PDT by yefragetuwrabrumuy
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To: dr_lew; Mike Darancette; SunkenCiv

I disagree. I think it is purely the large size. When primitive man invented the bow and arrow, all super sized meat on the hoof became easy pickins. Only in africa and india did supersized meat survive...which makes us wonder what was wrong with the humans in those two locations. In india they learned to tame the supersized animals. But in africa, it seems they just didn’t learn.


18 posted on 11/04/2011 8:20:23 PM PDT by mamelukesabre
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To: SunkenCiv
There is no clear pattern because the basic premise is wrong. When you figure out the question, then the pattern emerges. But if by pre-determination you have eliminated some questions, I would start there where there is no pattern.

Clues, Polar ice is thickest at the magnetic poles rather than the solar poles...

What causes water to react to magnetic fields...

How did Woolly mammoths die with flowers preserved in their stomachs... How, without digesting? Did the earths magnetic poles ever reverse... How, what could cause that?... Connect the dots.

19 posted on 11/04/2011 8:23:16 PM PDT by American in Israel (A wise man's heart directs him to the right, but the foolish mans heart directs him toward the left.)
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To: EEGator
What is the value(monetary) of a knife like that?

Oh... of course it depends on the collector, but I figure it is in the vicinity of $1,500 or so.

20 posted on 11/04/2011 9:23:24 PM PDT by Ramius (personally, I give us... one chance in three. More tea?)
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