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Wednesday, June 13, 2012
WOOLLY MAMMOTH EXTINCTION HAS LESSONS FOR MODERN CLIMATE CHANGE
HUMANS AND WOOLLY MAMMOTHS CO-EXISTED FOR MILLENNIA, THE SHAGGY GIANTS
DISAPPEARED FROM THE GLOBE BETWEEN 4,000 AND 10,000 YEARS AGO, AND
SCIENTISTS COULDN’T EXPLAIN UNTIL RECENTLY EXACTLY HOW THE FLINTSTONIAN
BEHEMOTHS WENT EXTINCT.
In a paper published June 12 in the journalNature Communications,
UCLA researchers and colleagues reveal that not long after the last ice
age, the last woolly mammoths succumbed to a lethal combination of
climate warming, encroaching humans and habitat change — the same
threats facing many species today.
were interested to know what happened to this species during the
climate warming at the end of the last ice age because we were looking
for insights into what might happen today due to human-induced climate
change,” said Glen MacDonald, director ofUCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability(IoES). “The answer to why woolly mammoths died off sounds a lot like what we expect with future climate warming.”