How Mammoths Lost The Extinction Lottery

Nature ^ | November 2, 2011 | Ewen Callaway

[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.

[SunkenCiv]

During the last ice age, 150 genera of large animals roamed the planet. [George Teichmann]

[SunkenCiv]

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The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization by Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith

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[SunkenCiv]

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[ClearCase_guy]

"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.

[SunkenCiv]

• What killed the mammoths and other behemoths?
• Ancient Atomic Warfare - Religious texts and geological evidence
• The Pleistocene Extinction
• Supernova debris found on Earth
• Deep freeze dealt death knell to bison (Ice Age)
• Humans to Blame for Ice Age Extinctions, Study Says
• Supernova Storm Wiped Out Mammoths?
• Supernova Storm Wiped Out Mammoths?
• Scientist: Comets Blasted Early Americans
• Native Americans Recorded Supernova Explosion
• Terrestrial Evidence of a Nuclear Catastrophe in Paleoindian Times
• Did comet start deadly cold snap?
• Diamonds tell tale of comet that killed off the cavemen
• Catastrophic Comet Chilled and Killed Ice Age Beasts (and Clovis people)
• Oregon Researchers Involved In New Clovis-Age Impact Theory (More)
• Comet May Have Doomed Mammoths
• Ice Age Ends Smashingly: Did A Comet Blow Up Over Eastern Canada? (More) (Carolina Bays)
• Climate alarmists lose another piece of evidence
• Comet Theory Collides With Clovis Research, May Explain Disappearance of Ancient People
• NSF Press Release: Comet May Have Exploded Over North America 13,000 Years Ago
• Research Team Says Extraterrestrial Impact To Blame For Ice Age Extinctions (More)
• Cosmic blast may have killed off megafauna: Scientists say early humans doomed, too
• Cosmic blast may have killed off megafauna: Scientists say early humans doomed, too
• Evidence for an extraterrestrial impact 12,900 years ago
• Site Provides Evidence For Ancient Comet Explosion (Topper - SC)
• The End of Eden: The Comet That Changed Civilization
• Great beasts peppered from space
• Did Comets Cause Ancient American Extinctions?
• Al Goodyear And The Secrets Of Ancient Americans
• The mysterious forest rings of northern Ontario
• Life Survived Catastrophic Space Rock Impact [Chesapeake Bay area]
• Research Casts New Light On History Of North America
• Exploding Asteroid Theory Strengthened By New Evidence Located In Ohio, Indiana
• First Humans To Settle Americas Came From Europe, Not From Asia....
• Diamonds Rained Down During Ice Age
• Diamonds Rained Down During Ice Age ($$$)
• First Humans To Settle Americas Came From Europe, Not From Asia Over Bering Strait -
• Tracking down abrupt climate changes (Rapid natural climate change 12,700 years ago)
• Mammoth Mystery: The Beasts' Final Years
• Scientists find signs of 13,000-year-old extinction event
• Scientists say comet killed off mammoths, saber-toothed tigers
• Diamonds Linked to Quick Cooling Eons Ago
• Six North American sites hold 12,900-year-old nanodiamond-rich soil
• Did a Comet Hit Earth 12,000 Years Ago?
• Mammoths wiped out by 'perfect storm?'
• Laser mapping may help solve the mystery of the Mima Mounds
• Humans to Blame for Extinction? - Not Necessarily So ...
• Did a Comet Cause a North American Die-Off around 13,000 Years Ago?
• Carolina bays gouged into the ground at a magnetic reversal
• North America comet theory questioned
• Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months
• Car-Sized Creature Whacked with Tail's Sweet Spot (until 10,000 years ago)
• Starvation 'wiped out' giant deer
• Prehistoric man, giant animal coexisted
• Extinction of Giant Mammals Changed Landscape Dramatically
• Sophisticated hunters not to blame for driving mammoths to extinction
• Big freeze plunged Europe into ice age in months
• Kansas scientists probe mysterious possible comet strikes on Earth
• Explosive Nearby Star Could Threaten Earth
• T Pyxidis Soon To Be A Type Ia Supernova
• The Death Star (Supernova close to Earth - could wipe us out)
• Cave reveals Southwest's abrupt climate swings during Ice Age
• Musk Ox Population Decline Due to Climate, Not Humans, Study Finds
• Hour-long hailstorm may have caused 1,000-year freeze, say scientists
• Comet trail may have caused last ice age - UPI.com
• New Study Reveals Link Between 'Climate Footprints' and Mass Mammal Extinction
• As Mammoths Died Out, Earth Chilled (mammoth burp and fart levels dropped, contributing to cooling)
• Methane Extinctions - Could this Explain the Carolina Bays?
• Fungi, Feces Show Comet Didn't Kill Ice Age Mammals?
• Answer to what ended the last ice age may be blowing in the winds, paper says
• Los Angeles oil history runs deep
• Woolly mammoth extinction 'not linked to humans'
• True causes for extinction of cave bear revealed
• Mammoth-killing space blast 'off the hook'
• No evidence for Clovis comet catastrophe, archaeologists say
• Comet Theory Comes Crashing to Earth
• Scientists reveal a first in Ice Age art
• Plasma, Solar Outbursts, and the End of the Last Ice Age

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[Mike Darancette]

. 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.

[dr_lew]

Maybe "Wooly" had something to do with it.

My thought exactly! Uncanny, eh?

[Ramius]

"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...

[txhurl]

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

[Ramius]

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.

[cripplecreek]

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.

[BenKenobi]

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.

[EEGator]

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

[SunkenCiv]

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

[SunkenCiv]

They went extinct because of the Occupy Ice Age jokers.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

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.

[mamelukesabre]

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.

[American in Israel]

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.

[Ramius]

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.