Posted on 04/02/2008 2:02:53 PM PDT by Sub-Driver
Study: Humans Drove Final Nail into Mammoth Coffin
Clara Moskowitz LiveScience Staff Writer LiveScience.comWed Apr 2, 9:31 AM ET
Humans may have struck the final blow that killed the woolly-mammoth, but climate change seems to have played a major part in setting up the end-game, according to a new study.
Though mammoth populations declined severely around 12,000 years ago, they didn't completely disappear until around 3,600 years ago. Scientists have long debated what finally drove the furry beasts over the edge. Researchers led by David Nogues-Bravo of the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Spain used models of the climate, as well as models of woolly-mammoth and human populations, to study the relative importance of various factors leading to the mammals' demise.
The scientists published their results in the journal PLoS Biology.
The team found that the brunt of the damage done to mammoths was due to Earth's warming weather around 8,000 to 6,000 years ago. Since Earth was coming out of a glacial period at that time, temperatures were climbing and recasting the planet's landscape, and the mammoth's preferred habitat, steppe tundra, was vastly reduced.
The researchers calculated the temperature window in which mammoths can survive by matching known fossil specimens with climate models. They determined the temperature at the time each mammoth specimen lived and combined the data to get an overall picture of the animals' preferred climate range.
The team found that by 6,000 years ago, mammoths were relegated to 10 percent of the habitat that had previously been available to them 42,000 years ago when the glaciers were at their largest size and greatest extent.
But climate doesn't seem to explain the entirety of the mammoth's extinction. These hardy animals had survived, barely, a previous interglacial period of planet warming around 126,000 years ago.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Bush’s fault?
Sea level 7,500 years ago was 15 feet higher than today’s; that is because it was much warmer at that time than now.
Global Warming killed the mammoths!!!!
“Run Bambi, man is in the forest!”
Actually, it was much lower and rising at that time. It was approximately 7,500 years ago that the Mediterranean likely overflowed the Bosporous into the Black Sea, raising the level of the Black Sea some 300 feet. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory
Super, now I have to feel guilty about what humans did to wooly mammoths. I’ll add it to the list...
I knew somebody would beat me to it.
Now, wait now. Who killed all the mammoths found in Siberia with fresh food in their stomach, flash-frozen to death? Did humans do that? Dang, if they did, we need that technology, so we can spend less on freezers and refrigerators and ski slopes and stuff like that.
I was thinking the same thing. Now it’s my fault the wooly is gone. Can we put this up there with reperations? Did it say it was humans fault or the woolys fault that the earth warmed up? I wonder if they raised the price of gas back then too?
That's more reasonable than having to draw for a Mammoth tag each season.
Mmmmmmmmm...Mammoth
They could have instituted a Wooly catch and release program.
GGG ping though I recall you sending a similar thread out a few days ago or yesterday).
In essence "we have no idea how they died so we just made up some *&@% which will hopefully get us some grant money and a trip to the meeting".
But at least we gave it a decent burial.
Yep.
Seems like big fudge factor built into their calculation. Almost as if they wanted to blame humans no matter how many mammoths were killed.
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