Mighty mammoths fell victim to rapid global warming, new study shows

Woolly mammoths, short-faced bears and cave lions, largely went extinct because of rapid climate-warming events, a new study shows. During the unstable climate of the Late Pleistocene, about 60,000 to 12,000 years ago, abrupt climate spikes, called interstadials, increased temperatures between 4C and 16C in a matter of decades. Large animals likely found it difficult to survive in these hot conditions, possibly because of the effects it had on their habitats and prey, the researchers said. Interstadials “are known to have caused dramatic shifts in global rainfall and vegetation patterns,” the study’s first author Alan Cooper, director for the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the University of Adelaide in Australia, told Live Science.

In many ways, the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and resulting warming effects are expected to have a similar rate of change to the onset of past interstadials, heralding another major phase of large mammal extinctions.

Report author Alan Cooper

George Cuvier, the French palaeontologist who first recognised the mammoth and the giant ground sloth, started the speculation in 1796 when he suggested that giant biblical floods were to blame for the animals’ demise. The extinctions also baffled Charles Darwin after he encountered megafaunal remains in South America. Since then, various studies have placed the bulk of responsibility on ice age humans, temperature swings and a perfect storm of events. However, advances in examining ancient DNA and ancient climate allowed Cooper and his colleagues to get to the bottom of the issue. Earth’s climate is much more stable today than it was during the Late Pleistocene, making the world’s current warming trends a “major concern”, the researchers said.

This study is a bit of a wake-up call.

Eline Lorenzen, at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark

Science woolly