Mammoth Island

Imagined Wooly Mammoth
Source: PSU

Mammoth is the name given to any species within the extinct genus Mammuthus. A large elephant like mammal equipped with long curved tusks and in some Northern latitude species, a long covering of hair. The Wooly mammoth, drawn above, being the classic example that springs to most minds when the word mammoth is mentioned.

These creatures roamed Europe, Africa, Asia and Northern America during The Pleistocene to the more recent holocene, until the majority died out across the major continents approximately 12,000 to 10,000 years BP.

While a definitive and wholly agreed upon reason for their gradual decline and subsequent extinction has yet to be agreed upon in the scientific community, environmental and anthropological causes are regularly cited.

The gradual warming of climate at the start of The Holocene is thought to be one possible driver of their dwindling numbers. The glacial retreat created by this warming and the change in vegetation from open woodland and grassland to more dense forests would have reduced available habitats for large species like Mammoths.

Humans also began having a greater hand in environmental change as the climate warmed and the vegetation cover became more favourable to hunting large predators. This caused the tables to turn, allowing humans to become the more dominant. Overhunting of the mammoth species for food and clothing may therefore have played a large part in their demise.

Wrangel island is a small island located in The Arctic Ocean, within the area known as Beringia (when above sea level) mentioned in previous blog posts. It has recently been discovered that a pygmy species of mammoth survived on this island way past those living on the major continents, up to 2000 years BCE (Vartanyan, 1993). Recent analysis has caused these wrangel island mammoths to no longer be considered dwarfs, (Vartanyan et.al, 2003).

Map showing rise in sea level in The Bering Strait with time.
a–f, Mammoth distribution (red) at 18,000 (a), 13,000 (b), 10,000 (c), 9,000 (d), 8,000 (e) and 4,000 (f) yr bp is shown.
Source: (Guthrie, 2004)

Why is it then that mammoths were able to survive so long, even in a smaller form, past their continent dwelling relatives?

This small island was cut off from the mainland continents when sea levels began rising due to the melting ice sheets towards the start of the holocene. This rise in sea level would have caused complete isolation from the rest of the world, leaving Wrangel Island untouched again by man until settlers inhabited the island.

One proposed theory is that this provides evidence for the major role humans played in driving mammoths to extinction. Another idea is that this small island provided an idyllic safe haven, with a persistent vegetation similar to that which mammoths thrived in during the colder climates in continental areas (Lozkhin, 2001). But were there no other wrangel type refugia for mammoths on the mainlands?

Whilst the true reason for the mammoths persistence on Wrangel Island is unknown, it can be said that the rise in sea level that caused the cut off of this island from the rest of the world may have saved these mammoths....... if only for a little while.