Woolly Mammoth
The Woolly Mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the ice age, otherwise known as the Pleistocene epoch. The Woolly Mammoth closest living relative is the Asian elephant.
The Woolly Mammoths were around the same size as African elephants, reaching a height of up to 11 feet and weighing up to 6 metric tons.
Difference Between Woolly Mammoths and Elephants
Woolly Mammoths roamed the earth tens of thousands of years ago leading life similar but colder to modern-day elephants of whom the Asian elephant is the closest living descendant.
Of the early mammoths was a commonly found animal during the last ice age, if the mammoths fossils have been discovered on every continent except for Australia and South American mammoths were similar in size to elephants but had adapted individual characteristics to live in the extremely cold weather of the Ice Age.
Wolly Mammoths have smaller ears and shorter tails and perhaps the most obvious difference between Wolly Mammoths and Elephants were that woolly mammoths were covered in a full coat of hair surviving in the cold dyed tundra of the Ice Age.
Wolly Mammoths were well adapted to their environment using their large tusks to brush away snow as they look for food and secreting oil that covered their fur insulating them further from the cold.
When did Woolly Mammoths go extinct?
Ten thousand years or so ago the numbers of Wolly Mammoths began to dwindle before eventually becoming extinct four thousand years ago.
But what led to the disappearance of these large herbivores from the planet?
We take a look at the evidence and try to decipher the real cause of the extinction of Wolly Mammoths.
Three Reasons:
Extinction of Woolly Mammoths: Reason Number One
Climate change scientists have always been intrigued about what caused the extinction of the Woolly Mammoths or megafauna which lived in the Late Pleistocene period.
The Pleistocene Period
The Pleistocene Period started about 1.8 million years ago but ended just 10,000 years ago with the last ice age.
The popular reason often given for the demise of the woolly mammoth is that as the earth began to heat the world's climate.
The climate became too much for the mammoths to handle who had evolved to live in conditions of a colder globe climate change has been held widely responsible for this loss as this large mammal struggled to adapt to changing conditions and environments.
Wolly Mammoths were herbivores, so they were very dependent on gaining all the nutrients they needed to survive from the plants that they ate if climate change led to the dying out of some vital mineral supplying plants mammals would suffer considerably.
Extinction of Woolly Mammoths: Reason Number Two
But while sudden changes to Earth's climate may have played a part in the demise of the Woolly Mammoths and large mammals that roam the earth surface 10,000 or so years ago.
Scientists are increasingly beginning to argue that human influence was significant when the ice age ended and temperature and the climate became more amenable.
And vast areas of the world become habitable by humans who advance northwards exploring new territories as humans spread out. They come into contact with early mammoths which they hunted for their meat.
Combined with increased contact and hunting by humans as they increasingly entered the areas of habitat led to their eventual extinction of the Woolly Mammoths.
The population was at such a low ebb by the time that they were hunted by humans.
Some experts argue that even if every human on the planet at the time killed a mammoth once every three years the only mammoths would have become extinct.
So, while climate change is still the mammoth a crippling blow it may have been human hunters who landed a killer blow in sealing their fate as an extinct species.
Extinction of Woolly Mammoths: Reason Number Three
Research in 2007 relieved that the demise of the Woolly Mammoths in North America at least may have been caused by the sudden impact of a meteorite or comet hit.
The earth scientists from Brown University in Rhode Island USA believed that they have found evidence of an asteroid hitting the earth which led to the Extinction of Woolly Mammoths and large mammals in North America as a result of massive climate.
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