Mammoths and Heat: Like Other Mega-Fauna, Warming Hurt

They found that short, rapid warming events recorded during the last ice age 60,000-12,000 years ago coincided with major extinction events even before the appearance of man.

Alan Cooper, director of Australian Center for Ancient DNA at University of Adelaide stated in an email that interstadials have been known to have impacted dramatic shifts in vegetation patterns and global rainfall.

According to reports, the reason behind the extinction of some of Earth’s largest animals i. e. “megafauna” such as giant sloths, mammoths, and mastodons, has been a mystery for scientists.

The journal published explores, the hasty climate warming that had such an adverse impact on these animals is similar to the rapid man-made climate change that is occurring today. This continued over thousands of years, with temperatures spiking up 7.2 to 28 degrees Fahrenheit.

This conclusion was reached after researchers detected a pattern, 10 years ago, in ancient DNA studies suggesting the rapid disappearance of large species.

Researchers compared advanced analysis of ancient megafaunal DNA with radiocarbon dating with geological records of severe climate changes from ice cores and ancient sediments.

Rapid warming of the world where woolly mammoths and other megafauna like woolly rhinos (both shown in the illustration above) is thought to have led to their extinction rather than human hunting or habitat destruction. “Even without the presence of humans we saw in mass extinctions”. Originally, the data seemed to suggest the extinctions were tied into “intense cold snaps”.

A new research has been able to know the main culprit behind the extinction of the wooly mammoths, short-faced bears and cave lions and other species of the last ice age. Second, carbon dating and understanding of temperature records have vastly improved over the years, permitting better resolution through time. The abrupt warming of temperatures only set the wheels in motions during the “glacial maximum”.

Researchers pegged rapid warming, not sudden cold snaps, as the cause of the extinctions during the last glacial maximum.

Despite the findings, Professor Chris Turney, a palaeoclimate researcher at the University of New South Wales, said: ‘It is important to recognise that man still played an important role in the disappearance of the major megafauna species.

Researchers have also stated that humans were certainly the “coup de grace”, or the last nail in the coffin to put it more bluntly, on a population of creatures and animals that were already under stress due to climate change.