Posted on 02/28/2014 12:56:27 PM PST by fishtank
Wooly Mammoth Mystery Finally Solved?
by Jake Hebert, Ph.D. *
Researchers claim to potentially have solved the mystery of the wooly mammoth’s mass extinction.1 After drilling permafrost cores in Alaska, Canada, and northern Russia, a team led by Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen analyzed DNA remnants of Arctic vegetation within those cores. Based upon their analysis of the cores, they concluded that edible plants called forbs (which include sagebrush, yarrow, and mums) were once much more abundant upon the Arctic steppes. Furthermore, the stomach contents within mammoth and other animal carcasses seem to indicate that the mammoths preferred these forbs. The scientists theorize that an “invasion” by grasses crowded out the forbs, greatly reducing the amount of the mammoths’ preferred foods. But is this really an adequate explanation? Researchers have long assumed that mammoths did eat grasses, as do modern-day elephants. Yet, even if the mammoths preferred forbs, they could still have presumably subsisted on a grass-rich diet.
This is only the latest of many theories offered to explain the wooly mammoth’s extinction. As recently as 2013, scientists attributed the animal’s disappearance to a warming climate.2
Not only is the extinction of the wooly mammoth difficult for secular scientists to explain, but perhaps somewhat surprisingly, the creature’s past presence in large numbers in Siberia and other places is also problematic. In secular thinking, we are now living within a warm, relatively short “interglacial” period that separates longer, colder “glacials” or ice ages. Yet even in today’s supposedly warmer climate, the long winters in Siberia are extremely cold, with temperatures often reaching -40°C or lower!3 How could even the wooly mammoths have tolerated such extremely cold temperatures?
Numbering in the millions, the mammoth herds were too numerous and slow-moving to travel to warmer regions during the winter.4 And even if they could have migrated during winters and returned to Siberia in the summers, the warmer months would also have threatened them, as the sun would have melted the top layers of permafrost and created treacherous bogs for the large beasts to navigate.
It stands to reason that Siberia’s past climate must have actually been warmer than it is today, with an absence of permafrost. However, this presents an additional problem for secular, uniformitarian theories that assume the exact opposite—a colder climate prior to what they would consider our current warmer “interglacial.”
... more at link ...
Article posted on February 28, 2014.
Of course they do. The temperature is not decisive in itself.
Food supply is a problem however.
Animals do have to come up with mechanisms to survive the winter food supply problem, like hibernation or migration.
Yup. Megafauna disappears shortly after man shows up.
North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Madagscar, etc.
Not quite true.
Pygmies certainly hunted elephants.
Some Ethiopian tribes hunted elephants on horseback with broadswords. That certainly sounds like an exciting sport!
The theory is that African and southern Asian megafauna evolved along with humans, so were adapted to them when they finally became truly effective hunters.
North Eurasia, the Americas, Oz, Madagascar, New Zealand, no such luck.
Don't think so. Pygmies and Bushmen kill large animals all the time.
Two main methods.
Weak bows with poison arrows.
Arrows or spears in the gut. Infection starts. Follow the animal around for a few days till it collapses. Not what we call sporting, but quite effective.
Here’s some video of pygmies killing elephants without firearms.
African and Asian civilizations have been using elephants as working animals for 4000 years or more. If you can trap and tame an elephant, you can certainly kill one.
For the most part it wasn’t the case across broad reaches of Africa. Not in Kenya, not in South Africa, etc. There are plenty of old 19th century hunters memoirs around, who made their living off Ivory, making this point. Its a recurring item in Rider Haggards books, and he knew dozens of those guys.
Negative 40 C, huh? Guess that kinda blows my theory they were driven to extinction by global warming.
They all decided to become gay.
Ah, you’ve quoted the original source.
An Arctic much warmer than today grew too cold to support herbivores that large.
I have no doubt that mammoths (and elephants) could be killed with ancient weapons. I just don't think ancient man contributed much to their extinction as some scientists claim.
“Noah is well documented as a Mammoth hater. He simply didn’t put any Mammoths on his ark.”
A simpler explanation might be that a pair of Mammoths were just too damn big to fit in and feed. Those things are huge!
I’ll buy that in general.
Though elephants were once found throughout North Africa, the Middle East and even Cyprus. And humans certainly wiped these groups out.
Why post this crap.
I understand that. There's no indication that the author does, though. He just wrote
Yet even in today’s supposedly warmer climate, the long winters in Siberia are extremely cold, with temperatures often reaching -40°C or lower!3 How could even the wooly mammoths have tolerated such extremely cold temperatures?as though the temperature on its own would be a problem.
I absolutely agree.
It was man.
What these scientists are not thinking about is that over the past several million years, ice ages have come and gone. The wooly mammoth survived all of them save one.
The one when man gained mastery over the planet.
So, despite food sources changing from one glaciation to another, oscillating every 30,000 to 75,000 years, the mammoth learned to go to the food, or adapt to new foods, and in fact, proboscisian species proliferated. Until Mankind became truly human during this LAST (so far; algore, you listening?) glacial maximum.
I really think they want to remove mankind due to political correctness, as they can’t blame the excesses of primitive peoples on Western Male Christian Conservatives...
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