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The last woolly mammoths are believed to have survived until circa 4,000 years ago on Wrangel Island. Newly published research indicates this last relict population had stable living conditions until the very end, when something (or multiple somethings) occurred in a short timespan.
The last mammoths died on a remote island

The last woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean; they died out 4,000 years ago within a very short time. An international research team from the Universities of Helsinki and Tübingen and the Russian Academy of Sciences has now reconstructed the scenario that could have led to the mammoths' extinction. The researchers believe a combination of isolated habitat and extreme weather events, and even the spread of prehistoric man may have sealed the ancient giants' fate. The study has been published in the latest edition of Quaternary Science Reviews.
FULL STORY: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/10/191007081750.htm
 
Here's the bibliographic data and abstract from the newly published Wrangel Island research. The full article is available at the link below.
Thriving or surviving? The isotopic record of the Wrangel Island woolly mammoth population

LauraArppe, Juha A.Karhu, Sergey Vartanyan, Dorothée G. Drucker, Heli Etu-Sihvola, Hervé Bocherens
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2019.105884

Abstract

The world's last population of woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) lived on Wrangel Island persisting well into the Holocene, going extinct at ca. 4000 cal BP. According to the frequency of radiocarbon dated mammoth remains from the island, the extinction appears fairly abrupt. This study investigates the ecology of the Wrangel Island mammoth population by means of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotope analyses. We report new isotope data on 77 radiocarbon dated mammoth specimens from Wrangel Island and Siberia, and evaluate them in relation to previously published isotope data for Pleistocene mammoths from Beringia and lower latitude Eurasia, and the other insular Holocene mammoth population from St. Paul Island. Contrary to prior suggestions of gradual habitat deterioration, the nitrogen isotope values of the Wrangel Island mammoths do not support a decline in forage quality/quantity, and are in fact very similar to their north Beringian forebears right to the end. However, compared to Siberian mammoths, those from Wrangel Island show a difference in their energy economy as judged by the carbon isotope values of structural carbonate, possibly representing a lower need of adaptive strategies for survival in extreme cold. Increased mid-Holocene weathering of rock formations in the central mountains is suggested by sulfur isotope values. Scenarios related to water quality problems stemming from increased weathering, and a possibility of a catastrophic starvation event as a cause of, or contributing factor in their demise are discussed.
FULL PAPER: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277379119301398?via=ihub
 
This is an interesting subject, any updates on what happened to the bones? i.e did they get sold or were they sent to a museum? I've recently found a fossilised sea sponge and a piece of fossilised bone which I've been told is likely to be part of a rib or fibula and could be somewhere in the region of 900,000 years old.
 
Here's an EACH news release reporting the results of a silent auction held on 10 March (2018).

The star lots included a selection of fossils and mammal bones. These items of historical interest created surprise and excitement when they were donated at the EACH shop in Unthank Road last summer.

The prehistoric collection included mammoth vertebrae & leg bones, four specimens of deer antler and bison limb bones, and fetched more than £450. Buyers included private collectors and grandparents buying the fossils and bones for their grandchildren.

https://www.each.org.uk/about-us/me...s-to-raise-a-mammoth-1500-for-the-nook-appeal
 
After analysis it was discovered they'd misplaced a hyphen and they'd received five million year-old bones.
 
Mexican Mammoths.

Archaeologists have found the bones of about 60 mammoths at an airport under construction north of Mexico City, near human-built “traps” where more than a dozen mammoths were found last year.

Both discoveries reveal how appealing the area — once a shallow lake — was for mammoths.

The National Institute of Anthropology and History said there was no immediate evidence that the 60 newly discovered mammoths at the old Santa Lucia military air base had been butchered by humans.

Institute archaeologist Pedro Sanchez Nava said the giant herbivores had probably just got stuck in the mud of an ancient lake, once known as Xaltocan and now disappeared.

But the bones will be subject to further study, because Mr Sanchez Nava said humans might have carved up the mammoths once they got stuck.

About 15 human burials with simple offerings were found nearby, but they probably dated from around 500 to 1,000 years ago, long after the mammoths had disappeared.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/break...-of-dozens-of-mammoths-in-mexico-1001184.html
 
Interesting find.

Russian scientists are working to retrieve the well-preserved skeleton of a woolly mammoth, which has some ligaments still attached to it, from a lake in northern Siberia.

Fragments of the skeleton were found by local reindeer herders in the shallows of Pechevalavato Lake on the Yamalo-Nenets region a few days ago. They found part of the animal's skull, the lower jaw, several ribs, and a foot fragment with sinews still intact.

Woolly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago, although scientists think small groups of them may have lived on longer in Alaska and on Russia's Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast.

Russian television stations on Friday showed scientists looking for fragments of the skeleton in the lakeside silt.

Scientists have retrieved more bones and also located more massive fragments protruding from the silt. They said it would take significant time and special equipment to recover the rest of the skeleton—if it had all survived in position.

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-well-preserved-mammoth-skeleton-siberian-lake.html

See Also:

https://www.livescience.com/woolly-mammoth-skeleton-poop-siberia.html
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Interesting find.

Russian scientists are working to retrieve the well-preserved skeleton of a woolly mammoth, which has some ligaments still attached to it, from a lake in northern Siberia.

Fragments of the skeleton were found by local reindeer herders in the shallows of Pechevalavato Lake on the Yamalo-Nenets region a few days ago. They found part of the animal's skull, the lower jaw, several ribs, and a foot fragment with sinews still intact.

Woolly mammoths are thought to have died out around 10,000 years ago, although scientists think small groups of them may have lived on longer in Alaska and on Russia's Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast.

Russian television stations on Friday showed scientists looking for fragments of the skeleton in the lakeside silt.

Scientists have retrieved more bones and also located more massive fragments protruding from the silt. They said it would take significant time and special equipment to recover the rest of the skeleton—if it had all survived in position.

https://phys.org/news/2020-07-well-preserved-mammoth-skeleton-siberian-lake.html

An excellent find. Here's some footage:
 
Analysis of prehistoric environmental DNA from the Yukon suggests mammoths and American horses survived thousands of years longer than previously believed.
Story of Mammoth Survival Is in the Soil

Ancient DNA preserved in soil may rewrite what we thought about the Ice Age

Based on bone and tooth records, the Yukon's last mammoths were thought to have gone extinct about 12,000 years ago. But a new genetic sampling technique suggests the great beasts may have stuck around a lot longer, plodding through the Arctic tundra with bison and elk for thousands of years more. The story is in the soil.

Bones are rich sources of prehistoric genetic information, but not the only ones; items ranging from shed Ice Age skin cells to pine needles can contribute to the genetic record stored in dirt. Paleogeneticists have been extracting and analyzing “environmental DNA” from soil for a long time, but getting rid of non-DNA material without destroying these fragile clues is daunting. ...

In their study, the researchers detected about 2,100 kinds of plants and 180 animals—including American horses and woolly mammoths, in samples from soil dated to thousands of years after their supposed extinction. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/story-of-mammoth-survival-is-in-the-soil/
 
Open to a lot of possibilities here, including a hoax, but Siberia is a vast area, and much of it has not had humans to set foot on it, so I'm open to small numbers of them still being around..

 
Open to a lot of possibilities here, including a hoax, but Siberia is a vast area, and much of it has not had humans to set foot on it, so I'm open to small numbers of them still being around..

Definately a bear with a fish, or a tiny trunkless, earless, tuskless mammoth with a fish :p
 
Analysis of prehistoric environmental DNA from the Yukon suggests mammoths and American horses survived thousands of years longer than previously believed.


FULL STORY: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/story-of-mammoth-survival-is-in-the-soil/
It is widely thought that the columbian mammoth (as opposed to the wooly mammoth) out lived its hairy cousin by quite a while, due to the fact that the columbian mammoth had less humans around to hunt it to extinction abd its ability to survive milder temperatures.
 
It is widely thought that the columbian mammoth (as opposed to the wooly mammoth) out lived its hairy cousin by quite a while, due to the fact that the columbian mammoth had less humans around to hunt it to extinction abd its ability to survive milder temperatures.

If you're interested in the possibility of archaic members of the elephant family surviving in the Americas well into the time of recorded history, try this thread:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...hothere-survive-until-the-19th-century.67688/
 
A newly discovered and analyzed Siberian mammoth has yielded 3 significant discoveries:

- the oldest DNA ever sequenced (1.2 million years old);
- a new, previously unsuspected species of mammoth; and
- an explanation for the lineage of the Columbian mammoth species.
Oldest sequenced DNA belonged to 1 million-year-old mystery mammoth

The oldest DNA ever decoded belonged to a mammoth from a mysterious, previously unknown lineage that lived about 1.2 million years ago, a new study finds.

Previously, the oldest known sequenced genome came from a horse that lived up to 780,000 years ago, in what is now Canada's Yukon Territory. Now, the mammoth discovery, "is, with a wide margin, the oldest DNA ever recovered" ...

The remains of the mysterious mammoth were discovered near Siberia's Krestovka River (now the mammoth's namesake). After studying its ancient DNA, along with the newly sequenced genomes of two other mammoths — a roughly 700,000-year-old woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) and an approximately 1 million-year old woolly mammoth predecessor — the scientists made a surprising discovery: Woolly mammoths mated with a mammoth from Krestovka's mysterious line about 420,000 years ago, leading to a hybrid mammoth we know today as the Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). ...

The Krestovka mammoth lineage, the researchers found, would have migrated from Siberia to North America, crossing over the Bering Strait land bridge, about 1.5 million years ago; fossil evidence suggests that the woolly mammoth crossed over about 100,000 years ago, but the researchers say it could have come earlier, perhaps 500,000 to 400,000 years ago.

It's unknown where the hybridization occurred, but when they met up, "these two lineages hybridized and formed what we now call the Columbian mammoth" ...

FULL STORY:
https://www.livescience.com/mammoth-oldest-sequenced-dna-on-record.html

PUBLISHED REPORT:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03224-9
 
A newly discovered and analyzed Siberian mammoth has yielded 3 significant discoveries:

- the oldest DNA ever sequenced (1.2 million years old);
- a new, previously unsuspected species of mammoth; and
- an explanation for the lineage of the Columbian mammoth species.


FULL STORY:
https://www.livescience.com/mammoth-oldest-sequenced-dna-on-record.html

PUBLISHED REPORT:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03224-9

I swear they sequenced dinosaur DNA, i saw it in that documentary 'Jurassic Park' :p
 
Bitcoin Billionaire to Reverse Climate Change by Cloning Wooly Mammoths

https://fortune.com/2021/09/13/bitcoin-billionaires-winklevoss-twins-woolly-mammoth/

Ummm . . . if I read this correctly, the idea is to reverse climate change by cloning wooly mammoths, setting them grazing on the tundra (which is already melting), and so returning the land to its primordial state. What am I missing here? Because this strikes me as a crack-brained idea.

"Gee, what can we do with all this money we've got? Ooo! Ooo! I know! I want a MAMMOTH! Nobody has a MAMMOTH!! That would be super cool!"

"But all the mammoths are dead, son. You'd have to use advanced genetic engineering to recreate one, sort of like Jurassic Park, and you remember how that turned out. Raises all kinds of knotty ethical problems. You'd get a lot of push-back and bad PR."

"Hmm, yeah, you're right. But how could we spin it to make it look like a GOOD thing? . . . . . Ooo! I know! We'll pitch it as a solution to climate change! Everyone will LOVE it!!"


Aeschylus was right: "A prosperous fool is a grievous burden."
 
Bitcoin Billionaire to Reverse Climate Change by Cloning Wooly Mammoths

https://fortune.com/2021/09/13/bitcoin-billionaires-winklevoss-twins-woolly-mammoth/

Ummm . . . if I read this correctly, the idea is to reverse climate change by cloning wooly mammoths, setting them grazing on the tundra (which is already melting), and so returning the land to its primordial state. What am I missing here? Because this strikes me as a crack-brained idea.

"Gee, what can we do with all this money we've got? Ooo! Ooo! I know! I want a MAMMOTH! Nobody has a MAMMOTH!! That would be super cool!"

"But all the mammoths are dead, son. You'd have to use advanced genetic engineering to recreate one, sort of like Jurassic Park, and you remember how that turned out. Raises all kinds of knotty ethical problems. You'd get a lot of push-back and bad PR."

"Hmm, yeah, you're right. But how could we spin it to make it look like a GOOD thing? . . . . . Ooo! I know! We'll pitch it as a solution to climate change! Everyone will LOVE it!!"


Aeschylus was right: "A prosperous fool is a grievous burden."
Wow, that's just mad.
 
Bitcoin Billionaire to Reverse Climate Change by Cloning Wooly Mammoths

https://fortune.com/2021/09/13/bitcoin-billionaires-winklevoss-twins-woolly-mammoth/

Ummm . . . if I read this correctly, the idea is to reverse climate change by cloning wooly mammoths, setting them grazing on the tundra (which is already melting), and so returning the land to its primordial state. What am I missing here? Because this strikes me as a crack-brained idea.

"Gee, what can we do with all this money we've got? Ooo! Ooo! I know! I want a MAMMOTH! Nobody has a MAMMOTH!! That would be super cool!"

"But all the mammoths are dead, son. You'd have to use advanced genetic engineering to recreate one, sort of like Jurassic Park, and you remember how that turned out. Raises all kinds of knotty ethical problems. You'd get a lot of push-back and bad PR."

"Hmm, yeah, you're right. But how could we spin it to make it look like a GOOD thing? . . . . . Ooo! I know! We'll pitch it as a solution to climate change! Everyone will LOVE it!!"


Aeschylus was right: "A prosperous fool is a grievous burden."
Could be worse, he could design and build a space ship for tourists, oh wait...
 
Well, I”m excited:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/sep/13/firm-bring-back-woolly-mammoth-from-extinction

“Ten thousand years after woolly mammoths vanished from the face of the Earth, scientists are embarking on an ambitious project to bring the beasts back to the Arctic tundra.

The prospect of recreating mammoths and returning them to the wild has been discussed – seriously at times – for more than a decade, but on Monday researchers announced fresh funding they believe could make their dream a reality.

The boost comes in the form of $15m (£11m) raised by the bioscience and genetics company Colossal, co-founded by Ben Lamm, a tech and software entrepreneur, and George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School who has pioneered new approaches to gene editing.”
 
They got it wrong; I ordered a Megalaceros, not a mammoth.

Cant they get it right? I even sent a picture.

(At least I didnt order a Garefowl; heavens know what dinosaura I might end up encumbered with).
 
My first impulse was to post a wisecrack about bio-engineering a revivified Arctic species when their Arctic tundra environment is in the process of disappearing. It turns out they're attempting to justify this project by claiming resurrected woolly mammoths would be useful instruments for protecting and preserving the tundra.

From the OP-linked article ...
“Our goal is to make a cold-resistant elephant, but it is going to look and behave like a mammoth. Not because we are trying to trick anybody, but because we want something that is functionally equivalent to the mammoth, that will enjoy its time at -40C, and do all the things that elephants and mammoths do, in particular knocking down trees” ...

The project is framed as an effort to help conserve Asian elephants by equipping them with traits that allow them to thrive in vast stretches of the Arctic known as the mammoth steppe. But the scientists also believe introducing herds of elephant-mammoth hybrids to the Arctic tundra may help restore the degraded habitat and combat some of the impacts of the climate crisis. For example, by knocking down trees, the beasts might help to restore the former Arctic grasslands.

Not all scientists suspect that creating mammoth-like animals in the lab is the most effective way to restore the tundra. “My personal thinking is that the justifications given – the idea that you could geoengineer the Arctic environment using a heard of mammoths – isn’t plausible,” said Dr Victoria Herridge, an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum.

“The scale at which you’d have to do this experiment is enormous. You are talking about hundreds of thousands of mammoths which each take 22 months to gestate and 30 years to grow to maturity.” ...

Gareth Phoenix, a professor of plant and global change ecology at the University of Sheffield, said: “While we do need a multitude of different approaches to stop climate change, we also need to initiate solutions responsibly to avoid unintended damaging consequences. ..."

“For instance, mammoths are proposed as a solution to help stop permafrost thaw because they will remove trees, trample and compact the ground and convert landscapes to grassland, which can help keep the ground cool. However, we know in the forested Arctic regions that trees and moss cover can be critical in protecting permafrost, so removing the trees and trampling the moss would be the last thing you’d want to do.”
I've got a bad feeling about this. I can see how this could result in a disturbing item for either the Day Of The Animals or the Day Of The Humans thread.
 
"bringing back these ancient creatures through genetic engineering could help reverse climate change". Wouldn't the methane emissions of huge herds of mammoths cancel out any benefits?
Yes!
 
I imagine that six years from now we will be hearing that mammoth hybrids are: "Just Six Years Away!"

Or we will hear nothing because it will have failed full stop, in the interim.
 
Climate change is something of a red herring here.
I feel the real question is whether we should try to de-extinct animal species that were hunted to extinction by humans.
Personally, I would be very happy to see a planet Earth with fewer humans and more Mammoths, Dodos, Great Auks, Thylacines, Steller's Sea Cows, Black Rhinos and dozens of others.
 
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