Humans Cleared of Killing Off Woolly Mammoths

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

No link, email from professor.

From the Toronto Star:

Humans cleared of killing off woolly mammoths

Last Updated Wed, 10 May 2006 14:13:18 EDT

CBC News

Climate shifts, not over-hunting, killed off the woolly mammoth and

wild horse, a carbon-dating study suggests.

* FROM NOV. 12, 2003: Climate tied to horse extinction

What caused the animals to become extinct at the end of the last Ice

Age more than 10,000 years ago has been one of prehistory's greatest

whodunits. Biologists have often pointed the finger at over-hunting by expanding

populations of humans.

But new radiocarbon dates give a more precise account of what happened

at the time of the mass extinctions, and shift the focus to global

warming.

Paleobiologist Dale Guthrie analyzed bone samples from bison, moose and

humans, which lived through the extinction period, and from wild horse

and mammoth, which did not survive. The more than 600 samples were

recovered in Alaska and the Yukon. He also studied preserved samples of pollen from

the period.

He found that by the time Homo sapiens started pushing into the region

around 12,300 years ago, the wild horse had already died out and woolly

mammoth were in decline.

Meanwhile, populations of bison, moose and white-rumped elk called

wapiti were increasing, said Guthrie, professor emeritus with the Institute of

Arctic Biology at University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

By analyzing pollen samples, he concluded that a naturally occurring

shift in climate caused the animals to change their diet.

Like their modern cousins, the wild horses and the woolly mammoth of

the past had a large intestinal pouch, or caecum, suited to feeding on

low-quality forage on the steppe.

But as the frozen landscape thawed, higher-quality grasses started to

grow. Those grasses were favoured by the bison and wapiti but were

indigestible to the mammoth, Guthrie suggested.

His results were published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.

[GundamFreakX 836]

Animals living 10,000 years ago? Heh, that's a bunch of phooey. They didn't live until 6,000 years ago. Hmmph, charging me with killing the woolly mammoth...you can blame the Great Flood and their stubborness to multiply to be their downfall. j/k about the stubborness part.

[Sledgstone 8,672]

global warming killed the mammoths. very interesting. i wonder how many years or decades (centuries?) it took to kill off the woolly mammoths tho. to think that they couldn't adapt to their changing food supply and were starved out of existance.. i remember hearing about how some plant life can overgrow and destroy entire crops in a season or two. those grasses must have had a drastic takeover effect on the landscape.

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

Yeah its true. Living here where ships come to port there are alot of plant life of foreign orgins that take over native plants. Its really ashame, alot of native plant life doesnt even exist anymore because of some of them.

[Pchan 5,162]

Pretty interesting stuff Dx. I thought the death of Woolly mammoths was only a result of adaptation to different climates - mammoth's traveling from one cold region to the other warmer, hance it meant they'd have to adapt, their tusks grew shorter for they didn't use them much, and their coat was discarded because of the heat near the equator. Heh that's what I thought X'D. Sweet news.

[Ladywriter 7,783]

when the climate changes, plants and animals die