Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Study: Humans Drove Final Nail into Mammoth Coffin
Yahoo ^

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: godsgravesglyphs
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-39 last
To: Sub-Driver
Mammoth Coffin

Did Ted Kennedy Die?

21 posted on 04/02/2008 2:30:52 PM PDT by fso301
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sub-Driver
...Around 6,000 years ago when the climate warmed in North Eurasia where mammoths lived, our ancestors were able to move in to the region. Once there, they might have hunted the already weakened population of mammoths to oblivion.

During the [earlier] interglacial period, climates were fairly warm, so why didn't [mammoths] go extinct then?" said Persaram Batra, a climate modeler at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, who worked on the study. It "could be because humans weren't there. Mammoth populations were so sparse, that if there had been humans, maybe they would have gone extinct.
"

The debate is over. Rock solid "might be"s,"could be"s and "maybe"s
22 posted on 04/02/2008 2:37:31 PM PDT by stylin19a
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sub-Driver
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.

Probably because 126,000 years ago there weren't any humans in North America and plenty few elsewhere.
23 posted on 04/02/2008 2:43:43 PM PDT by aruanan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sub-Driver

YEC INTREP


24 posted on 04/02/2008 2:52:57 PM PDT by LiteKeeper (Beware the secularization of America; the Islamization of Eurabia)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: PeterFinn

Someone, somewhere, feels guilty about this.


25 posted on 04/02/2008 3:10:14 PM PDT by tbw2 ("Sirat: Through the Fires of Hell" by Tamara Wilhite - on amazon.com)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: tbw2
Someone, somewhere, feels guilty about this.

Not me. I'm sure I would not be here were it not for my Nordic and Celtic ancestors having mammoth pot roast dinners on Sundays.

26 posted on 04/02/2008 3:18:53 PM PDT by PeterFinn (I am not voting for McCain. No way, no how.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: PeterFinn

It was 15 feet higher here on the west coast of the United States. Lowlying reas along the coastline here were unindated with seawater, creating deep inlets into mountainous areas, or what today look like abandoned beaches high above today’s sealevel beaches.

15000 years ago the paleo shoreline was 23-25 miles further west of today’s present shoreline.


27 posted on 04/02/2008 3:24:01 PM PDT by SatinDoll (Desperately seeking a conservative candidate.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: PeterFinn

“mammoth pot roast dinners”

I’d go for Mammoth Teriyaki.

OBTW, didn’t the modern discoverers of the frozen mammoths actually feast on some of the 10,000 year old meat?


28 posted on 04/02/2008 3:32:09 PM PDT by elcid1970 (;^))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 26 | View Replies]

To: Sub-Driver
Yesterdays Evil humans to blame thread
29 posted on 04/02/2008 3:33:18 PM PDT by ASA Vet (Do we want Huma answered the White House phone at 3AM?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Judith Anne; Sub-Driver

“There are a number of puzzling mysteries...the extinction of the mammoths and saber-toothed tigers, the vanishing of Indian tribes,...Carolina Bays,...wild temperature swings at the end of the Ice Age, and the cause of huge underwater landslides that sent massive (1000 ft. tall) tsunamis racing across the oceans millenia ago...” The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes, by Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith, will answer those questions and more. A really sobering read, particularly when you realize there is nothing people can do to prevent such an event.

We shouldn’t be blaming humans for the mammoth’s demise, as humans too were eliminated in large numbers at that time. 41,000 years ago a star supernovaed. It took a while for the material from that blast to arrive on Earth, and when it did, the results were catastrophic. This book details all the scientific evidence in layman’s terms.

Hope this helps in settling the arguments.


30 posted on 04/02/2008 3:37:09 PM PDT by SatinDoll (Desperately seeking a conservative candidate.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: ASA Vet

It’s those damn SUV that Fred and Barney used to drive,


31 posted on 04/02/2008 3:40:49 PM PDT by JimC214
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 29 | View Replies]

To: Sub-Driver

Study: Humans Drove Final Nail into Mammoth Coffin

Actually, it was me.


32 posted on 04/02/2008 4:07:15 PM PDT by Chickensoup (If it is not permitted, it is prohibited. Only the government can permit....)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sub-Driver
April fool or not, I notice a trend with all these "documentaries" thrown together with fancy graphics (all fictional), and validated by "scientists" whom we've never heard of before, and whom we'll never hear from again. The common thread, as with global warming, is the absolute faith, the belief actually, that just as with global warming, man is the primary culprit.

These "experts" have two things in common. One -- they can, with absolute confidence, examine a tiny toe bone and invent a whole social structure for the individual, including what he had for breakfast, his family attitudes, where he got water and food, and how he viewed strangers from another culture - like a liberal from Berkeley would, with input from sister Theresa, complete with touchy-feely psychobabble.
Second, they treat their theories as absolute faith. The zealots of the promised land had nothing over these guys.

The only thing that remains a mystery, and should fuel generations of pschiatrists and psychologists, is the need for these parasites, usually subsisting on grants and foundation money, to blame man for everything in the history of the cosmos. Without hesitation, doubts or qualifiers of any kind.

Needless to say, man has existed only to somehow screw up nature, and man has no rights whatsoever to assume his role in the big picture. That would require, well --- a giant leap of faith.

33 posted on 04/02/2008 5:56:30 PM PDT by Publius6961 (MSM: Israelis are killed by rockets; Lebanese are killed by Israelis.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Judith Anne

Freeze-dried Mammoths? Can’t we just add water, stir, and bring them back?


34 posted on 04/02/2008 6:01:44 PM PDT by Freedom_Is_Not_Free
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 9 | View Replies]

To: Freedom_Is_Not_Free

Evidently, they’re edible in Siberia.

And there are so many that froze instantly with fresh greens in their stomachs, that they have become a nearly limitless source of ivory for the trade.

That wasn’t climate change in years, months, or even weeks—they would have migrated, starved, rotted. That was climate change in a day. Had to be a huge catastrophe, I’ve wondered for years what happened, and I guess we’ll never know.

Siberia is one of the most fascinating areas on earth, under the ice....


35 posted on 04/02/2008 7:06:38 PM PDT by Judith Anne (I have no idea what to put here. Not a clue.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 34 | View Replies]


The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: Flood, Fire, and Famine in the History of Civilization The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes:
Flood, Fire, and Famine
in the History of Civilization

by Richard Firestone,
Allen West, and
Simon Warwick-Smith


36 posted on 04/03/2008 9:50:17 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_____________________Profile updated Saturday, March 29, 2008)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sub-Driver

Climate Change And Human Hunting Combine To Drive The Woolly Mammoth Extinct
Science Daily | 4-1-2008 | PLoS Biology
Posted on 04/01/2008 12:57:30 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1995058/posts


37 posted on 04/03/2008 9:55:43 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_____________________Profile updated Saturday, March 29, 2008)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

The Mystery Of Mammoth Tusks With Iron Fillings
Alaska Report News | 3-5-2008 | Ned Rozell
Posted on 03/08/2008 2:03:28 PM PST by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1982619/posts


38 posted on 04/03/2008 9:56:22 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_____________________Profile updated Saturday, March 29, 2008)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: indcons; blam; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·

 
Gods
Graves
Glyphs
Thanks indcons -- and you're right, we just had one. :')
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
Not a chance.

Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
 

· Google · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology magazine · Biblical Archaeology Society ·
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo ·
· History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·


39 posted on 04/03/2008 9:58:45 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/_____________________Profile updated Saturday, March 29, 2008)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-39 last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson