Background
Recent research sheds new light on this ancient puzzle, revealing intriguing insights into the timing and circumstances of mammoth extinction, especially focusing on the remarkable tale of the Wrangel Island mammoths, an island in the Arctic Ocean near Northern Siberia.
In the Late Pleistocene there was rapid, worldwide decline of megafauna, partially due to changes in climate. This caused mammoths to spread off into isolated populations off the coasts of Siberia and Alaska using the Bering land bridge. Rising sea levels trapped mammoths on Wrangel island 6,000 years ago, before eventually the mammoths went extinct 4,000 years ago. The cause of mammoth extinction is still under debate though, some think it might be caused by population bottlenecks, local extinction/recolonization events. Sampling bias could have also played a role in having inaccurate timing of extinction, which makes interpretations of the causes of extinction challenging (Dehasque et al., 2021; Guthrie, 2004; Nystrom et al., 2010).
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