Gene Reveals Mammoth Coat Colour

BBC ^ | 7-6-2006 | Rebecca Morelle

[blam]

GGG Ping?

[Onelifetogive]

They are thought to have died out about 4,500 years ago.

Bush's fault...

[evets]

Woolly mammoths had both dark and light coats

[patton]

From what size predator, would a wooly mammoth have needed to evolve an ability to hide?

[lesser_satan]

I think early man hunted them, IIRC.

[NonValueAdded]

From what size predator, would a wooly mammoth have needed to evolve an ability to hide?

From that largest and most voracious of all predators, global cooling. Those with the lighter fur did better at the glacier edge while the darker furred animals roamed in warmer climes. /total conjecture

[Calvin Locke]

Ebola's on the small side...

Then there are the animals that attack in packs. Get inside, and under the 12ft+ tusks, and it was probably
vulnerable, especially from *all* sides. I'm thinking hyenas, coyotes, etc.

[patton]

Actually, you amy be onto something. It is no accident that the color of one's skin is inversely proportional to the distance one's ancestors lived from the equator.

[MineralMan]

"From what size predator, would a wooly mammoth have needed to evolve an ability to hide?

"

Uh, humans and dire wolves and saber-toothed tigers, perhaps. Humans were the most dangerous predator of the wooly mammoth, though.

[Last Dakotan]

Did the light furred ones have to contend with affirmative action programs designed to aid the dark furred?

[mallardx]

I think those savage natives, unfamiliar with conservation practices, killed them all off. Selfish materialistic natives!

/sarcasm off

[MineralMan]

Just looking up predators on mammoths on Google, I found an interesting thing. Apparently, there was a report in Siberia in 1918 of a hunter seeing a wooly mammoth. Sounds far-fetched, but Siberia's very large, and was very sparsely populated in 1918. I suppose it could have happened.

These days, it's unlikely that any such isolated mammoth could still survive, given our satellite mapping. But...you just never know. They've only been extinct, supposedly, for a few thousand years now.

Wouldn't that be a treat?

[Defiant]

They had cave lions 3 times the size of African lions back then. Some pretty big bears, too.

[mallardx]

That would be the most amazing biological find of the century. That, or sasquatch/yeti.

[SampleMan]

Wasn't this already known from the frozen carcasses that have been found?

[AnotherUnixGeek]

They had cave lions 3 times the size of African lions back then.

Interesting - were these direct ancestors of today's lions or, like saber-toothed "tigers", were they more distantly related members of the cat family that happen to share a name with the modern version?

I'm still not clear on why land mammal sizes seem to have shrunk (cave bear, dire wolf, giant sloth, Imperial mammoth, Baluchitherium to more modest sizes today).

[Defiant]

They were real lions, they just got bigger in the northern grasslands, where huge wooley rhinos, mammoths and humongous deer grew big on the abundance of food, and that in turn led to larger predators.

There were lions in Europe into Roman times. In Alexander the Great's time, they used to hunt them. They weren't the huge kind any more, though.

[Doodle]

I'm still not clear on why land mammal sizes seem to have shrunk (cave bear, dire wolf, giant sloth, Imperial mammoth, Baluchitherium to more modest sizes today).

Because we nasty humans killed them off.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG Ping?

Definitely, because I can use that joke again...