[unlearner]

"comparing the ears of mammoths to other elephantine mammals would be relevant, with respect to ears and other cold/heat adaptations."

Do elephant ear size vary in direct proportion to their native climates?

Pick any animal you wish. The claim I am arguing against is a completely unscientific approach. Science does not deal in dogmas, it deals in likelihood. One might argue that small ears contribute to the likelihood of a colder native climate, but that is not the same as saying that it is PROOF of one view and other views are thereby disproved.

That this is your camp's attempt to falsify the hypothesis under debate is a poor example of scholarship, and a good example of dogma-driven desperation.

[Stultis]

One might argue that small ears contribute to the likelihood of a colder native climate, but that is not the same as saying that it is PROOF of one view and other views are thereby disproved.

Of course not. Science deals in evidence for and against theories and hypotheses, not "proof". And the anomalously small (compared to other elephants) mammoth ears are only one of a coordinated suite of features consistent with cold adaptation: body size and shape, hair, tusk configuration, etc. The author of your webpage doesn't seem to understand much of the evidence. I don't know if he's right about "erector muscles" on the hairs or not, but that's irrelevant to the mammoth's configuration. The thick, soft woolly underhair traps heat simply by it's fine texture and thickness, and the coarse guard hairs on the outside of the coat keep out the wind and shed moisture.

Fluffing/erecting the hair as the author suggests would not help keep the mammoths warm, as the author suggests. Quite the opposite. It would only perturb the whole system by also disturbing the guard hair layer and opening the lower layers to the environment.

Finally, mammoths aside, the paleobotany (evidence from fossil pollen, plants in the frozen mammoths' stomaches, etc) is TOTALLY out of whack with the author's claim that the animals inhabited a "tropical" climate.