Humans Did Not Kill Off Mammoths; Comet, Climate Change Helped, Studies Show

Indian Country Today ^ | June 13, 2012 | ICTMN Staff

[Free ThinkerNY]

Although human hunting played a part in the demise of the woolly mammoth about 10,000 years ago, homo sapiens were but bit players in a global drama involving climate change, comet impact and a multitude of other factors, scientists have found in separate studies.

Previous research had blamed their demise on tribal hunting. But new findings “pretty much dispel the idea of any one factor, any one event, as dooming the mammoths,” said Glen MacDonald, a researcher and geographer at the University of California in Los Angeles, to LiveScience.com.

In other words, hunting didn’t help, but it was not instrumental. The ancestors didn’t do it.

So what did? After thriving for 250,000 years, the huge mammals lingered on in dwarf form in the Arctic Ocean’s Wrangel Island until 3,700 years ago. Between 20,000 and 25,000 years ago, LiveScience said, the animals declined during the worst of the last major ice age, though they started to multiply in warmer interior Siberia.

[Flag_This]

"Humans Did Not Kill Off Mammoths..."

It was always a stupid theory.

[FlingWingFlyer]

The knuckledragging, homo sapien haters can put this in their pipe and smoke it!

[wastedyears]

It’s a good thing some government outlawed those prehistoric SUVs. Why, they almost killed humans, too.

(Do I really need a /sarc tag?)

[qam1]

B.S.

Ice ages have been coming and going for a few million years now and the Mammoths rode through them with no problem.

What was the difference last time? Man.

This is just a PC attempt to resurrect the Lib favorite Noble Savage myth

[djf]

It is a stupid theory.

Humans had almost zero impact on the buffalo until the arrival of two things:

The horse and the gun.

To think that stone-age humans could have decimated the mammoth population is ridiculous. An individual mammoth is just too large and powerful, human hunter time could have been way more effective against smaller prey.

[kevcol]

Doesn't matter...they'll be back in 5 years:

Within five years, a woolly mammoth will likely be cloned, according to scientists who have just recovered well-preserved bone marrow in a mammoth thigh bone. Japan's Kyodo News first reported the find. You can see photos of the thigh bone at this Kyodo page.

Russian scientist Semyon Grigoriev, acting director of the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum, and colleagues are now analyzing the marrow, which they extracted from the mammoth's femur, found in Siberian permafrost soil.
(link)

[pabianice]

“Global warming killed the mammoths.” Another piece of crap from the Leftards.

[djf]

I still think cloning is the hard way, and they could probably get viable eggs and sperm from recent finds.

[RushIsMyTeddyBear]

Can these lefties just go ahead and off themselves and be done with it? Would save a lot of time and money. Seriously.

[Olog-hai]

Why couldn’t woolly mammoths just stop driving gas-guzzling personal vehicles, switch from coal to “renewables” to generate power, and stop redeveloping the land so much . . . ? (Oh wait; they were wild animals. Climate change??)

[Flag_This]

"What was the difference last time? Man."

So who killed off the hundreds of other species that checked out at the same time?

[kevcol]

I know of a few groups (incl Penn Univ) who have been warming this up for 10 years. They got the Mammoth sequence done first, just needed to complete the African elephant. So the sequencing part is done as far as I know. I haven’t heard yet about finding viable sperm or eggs, but its possible.

[muawiyah]

The difference was more subtle ~ the Big Ice was pretty much gone by 14,000 years ago and life was returning to the Far North ~ the mastadons and their predators, the big cats and dire wolves, moved north with the grasslands where the mastadons thrived.

Then, just as everybody was getting cozy, 12,000 years ago a comet hit mid-continent and busted up the residual icesheet in Canada.

We find the debris all over the American midwest.

The ice flows down the St Lawrence valley increased flooding the North Atlantic with ice. This triggered an almost instantaneous return to deep Ice Age conditions.

1500 years later that ice melted and the interglacial climate continued on to where we are today ~ 5,000 years overdue for the next glaciation.

The Mastadons dining on grass and other herbacious delights died out rather quickly with nothing to eat. Their predators also died out.

With the big cats out of the way both North America and East Asia were opened up to human settlement.

[Jack Hammer]

“Climate change.”

Yeah, that’s it, “climate change.”

And it’s happening again, unless you renew my superfatted research grant.

Isn’t it amazing how many scientists come up with theories that demand huge grants in order to Save Mankind.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

****human hunter time could have been way more effective against smaller prey.****

I understand baby mammoth is both tender and tasty! And they are easy to kill!

[varmintman]

I sort of thought Vine Deloria had laid this one to rest around 20 years ago...

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Earth-White-Lies-Scientific/dp/1555913881

[hinckley buzzard]

Often overlooked is the massive outgassing of CO2 along with huge Siberian lava flows, unequalled in the rest of the world, at least in recorded geological time, which any geologist can expound upon. It is suspected to account for the sudden loss of mammalian life in the eurasian continent.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

Blame it on Bush. Why not? Just as stupid an accusation as those for global warming, poverty, starvation, and lack of sunspots on the sun which are also blamed on Bush.

Never let facts get in the way of faux science.

[doc1019]

Thank you ... a response that makes more sense then this ridiculous theory.