Study Says Climate Change Killed Off Woolly Mammoths, Not Humans

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Well there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is we might be dooming our entire species by refusing to take meaningful action on climate change. The good news is at least we’re not responsible for the extinction of another species. A new study says humans are not the reason woolly mammoths went kaput. Instead those great beasts succumbed to—oh c’mon!—climate change.

A new decade-long DNA study (which we first learned about at Gizmodo) published in Nature says the real culprit behind the demise of elephants’ furry cousins was not mankind as previously thought. The project, led by Professor Eske Willerslev, a Fellow of St John’s College, University of Cambridge, examined prehistoric DNA with cutting-edge technology and sequencing to identify what wiped out those majestic animals. As part of their “large-scale environmental DNA metagenomic study of ancient plant and mammal communities,” researchers analyzed “535 permafrost and lake sediment samples from across the Arctic spanning the past 50,000 years.”

The samples came from a 20 year collection in that region where woolly mammoth remains have been found. While the study gets deep into the scientific weeds, the conclusion is far too accessible for all of us. The genetic evidence points to melting icebergs as the leading cause of the animals extinction 4,000 years ago. The increase in water all but eliminated the vegetation they survived on. That was enough to kill them off after they survived for nearly five million years on this planet.

General wisdom has always blamed humans for woolly mammoth’s fate. It wasn’t an absurd assumption though. Our ancestors hunted them and used their bodies for countless reasons. And those impressive animals had done really well before we showed up. But in the end it was nature itself who did them in as the planet naturally warmed.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/study-says-climate-change-killed-221306342.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. One thing - it wasn't "melting icebergs as the leading cause"

The paper doesn't mention icebergs, or sea level rise. It says "our results suggest that their extinction came when the last pockets of the steppe–tundra vegetation finally disappeared, when the Arctic-wide paludification was brought on by warmer and wetter climates."

And your new word for today is "paludification" - "the process by which forest is converted to peatland".

What's interesting is that the survival of a few mammoths on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until about 2000 BC (ie after the great Pyramids were built) was already known, but this is saying that environment DNA - ie DNA fragments found scattered around the place, rather than in skeletons - indicate they survived on the Taimyr Peninsula in north central Siberia to about the same time - when there were a few humans there, and had been for quite some time.

[bucolic_frolic]

2. "deep into the scientific weeds" is not very scientific methodology

I mean, like, I have no idea what the author means.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

3. Meaning the text of the original paper gets very scientifically technical in the writers esteem (nt)