Woolly mammoths survived on Siberia’s Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago, outliving mainland populations by millennia.
Recreating Ice Age Biology in Asian Elephants
Bringing back a woolly mammoth is not a matter of cloning from intact cells. This genetic kinship extends to how these animals handle extreme environments. The woolly mammoth was an elephantid species and most closely related to today’s Asian elephants. Ancestors of both the mammoth and Asian elephant originated in Africa around 6.7 million to 7 million years ago and stayed for about 4 million years before moving up into Southern Europe and then farther up into what is now Siberia and the northern plains of Canada around a million years later. At around the same time a cataclysmic event occurred on Earth — the Ice Ages,
said Kevin Campbell of the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, who led the study into the ancient animal’s blood, which is detailed in the May 2 online issue of the journal Nature Genetics. A new study has found tiny genetic mutations that changed the way oxygen was delivered by its blood could be responsible for its tolerance to the cold climate.
Kevin Campbell, University of Manitoba
The Siberian Permafrost and the Pleistocene Park Experiment
The push to reintroduce cold-adapted megafauna is not merely academic. The Siberian plains, or steppes, are these vast tracts of land made up of permafrost, which have lost a lot of their animal populations. And the problem is, the tundra is this ticking time bomb. Trapped within the permafrost is more carbon than if we burned all the forests on Earth three times. And as the world warms, we’re getting closer and closer to the point where the permafrost melts and this time bomb will go off.
To combat this ticking clock, a father-son team, Sergei and Nikita Zimov, has operated an experiment in Siberia since the ’80’s where they roped off an area of the tundra and reintroduced Pleistocene-era animals, like reindeer, bison, and Yakut horses. They also brought in a Russian tank to mimic a mammoth. What they’ve discovered is that you can lower the temperature of the permafrost by as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit just by reintroducing these animals.
That’s because large herbivores encourage the growth of steppe grasses, which in turn have a high albedo effect. These light-colored grasses reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere like a mirror, reducing heat absorption and slowing the thaw of the underlying permafrost.
Extinction Timelines and the Modern Mammoth Ivory Trade
While continental populations of woolly mammoths died out on the mainland a little later, around 10,500 years ago, woolly mammoths died out due to a warming climate and human hunting pressure, isolated groups held on much longer. Mammoths were important to our ancestors for food, as well as for their bones, ivory and skins, and they were significant enough to feature in cave art, such as the 158 mammoths depicted on the walls of Rouffignac Cave in south-west France, by people 13,000 years ago. Populations persisted on Alaska’s St Paul Island until 5,600 years ago, and humans didn’t get there until very late, with researchers almost 100% certain that there were no people on St Paul.
Further north, on Wrangel Island, mammoths survived until 4,000 years ago. Researchers note that while human arrival on Wrangel coincided closely with the final disappearance of the species, no direct evidence indicates humans hunted them there; instead, genetic mutations resulting from extreme isolation likely contributed to poor health and final extinction.
Today, the melting permafrost continues to yield remarkably preserved remains not only bones, but flesh, skin, fur and DNA. Because mammoths are an extinct rather than endangered species, a legal and active trade in mammoth ivory thrives, particularly in China.
