Climate, not someone who killed mammoths

Mammoth habitat changes from cold to hot and humid, leading to their extinction. ( Photo: Antelope Valley Indian Museum ) Mammoths and other species may have become extinct more than 10,000 years ago because of climate mutations, not because of excessive hunting by humans, a new study says. .

Age determination by carbon radioactivity 600 bison skeletons, North American elk and humans (species that survived a major extinction) and remnants of mammoths and wild horses Equus ferus (do not survive) That fateful door shows that man is not the culprit of this extinction.

Scientists have proposed many different theories to explain the disappearance of mammoths and wild horses Equus ferus, coinciding with the time of humanity in Central Asia and North America over 12,000 years ago.

One theory is that a very toxic disease is the culprit of this situation. Another hypothesis argues that humans have destroyed herbivores, leading to changes in vegetation that resulted in extinction on a large scale.

Blitzkrieg, or hypothetical hunting, explains ancient hunters who have eradicated most large mammals and pushed some species to the door of extinction.

" However, contrary to this hypothesis, my data shows that the number of bison and elk increases both before and while humans are expanding the earth, " said Dale Guthrie, author of the study from Dai. Alaska said.

His carbon radioactivity studies have shown that there is a 1,000-year difference between the time of death of wild horses and hairy mammoths - something Guthrie said contradicts other theories.

Instead, he thinks climate change has changed the nature of dry cold regions. The warmer and humid summers have changed the vegetation into the types that mammoths and wild horses cannot afford.

T. An