Slashdot Mirror
Study Suggests Weather and Not Hunting Killed Off Wooly Mammoths
Big Hairy Ian writes, quoting the BBC: "A DNA analysis shows that the number of creatures began to decrease much earlier than previously thought as the world's climate changed. It also shows that there was a distinct population of mammoth in Europe that died out around 30,000 years ago. ... Dr Dalen worked with researchers in London to analyse DNA samples from 300 specimens from woolly mammoths collected by themselves and other groups in earlier studies ... [The researchers] speculate that it was so cold that the grass on which they fed became scarce. The decline was spurred on as the Ice Age ended, possibly because the grassland on which the creatures thrived was replaced by forests in the south and tundra in the north."
Scientist keep changing their mind on things! It's big science that's supporting research that shows that AGW is not the root of all evil! Wait, no.... it's liberal academics who are polluting our childrens's minds with nonsense like wholly mammoths not being hunted to extinction by savage humans!
I'm confused. Someone please point me to the right meme I'm supposed to employ against evil scientists here. Help me, Bill O'Reilly!
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
We all know they died in Noah's Flood.
I remember growing up how asteroids, overpopulation, diseases, and shit like that once killed every species that ever went extinct. Now climate change did it all. It's kind of convenient, as apocalyptic boogeymen go. One causative factor to rule them all!! Saves time when we're concocting the next apocalypse.
Hey, whatever happened to nuclear apocalypse--radiation/nuclear winter/etc.? Anyone remember that one back in the 80's? Man, I'm old.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
"Don't worry about the mammoth numbers, I'm sure they'll adapt to the changing weather. Mammoths have been around a very long time you know."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Look, who's the bigger villain, humans with their penchant for turning anything that moves or doesn't move into a ___burger or climate change that is the current boogeyman?
Who knows? Let's face it, any number of factors from volcanoes to natural predators to climate change to caveman barbeques all likely shared guilt. The world isn't black and white and people need to stop thinking of everything as having a singular one dimensional true answer.
The liberals will argue the opposite, and use this just as another reason why guns are bad.
It was all them blasted cavemen with their fancy fires that caused it!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Humans killed off the dinosaours by hunting, why not the big elephants with tusks?
Weather kills all that lives there.
Have you seen the size of those things? They must have driven *HUGE* SUVs. No wonder climate change wiped them out.
And exactly where do you see them doing this?
Citation?
I'm waiting.
I'm still waiting.
Since climate change only happens because of human activity it's still our fault, right?
Their insatiable drive for 24/7 dishwashers eliminated the mammoth's ability to reproduce.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Wasn't the BBC the one who said we'd be ice-free by 2013?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Global Humidification
Seriously, ever wear a sweater on a hot, humid day? It'll kill ya!
or make you wish you was dead
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Can we not contribute to the confusion between climate and weather, please? I mean, we're mostly technically literate people here and can appreciate the need to stick to agreed-upon definitions of words, right?
Words have meaning.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
But since humans are the cause of all climate change throughout the ages, then it was humans that killed the mammoths.
I think the world would be a better place without humans.
The BBC News version is pretty damn confusing.
""The picture that seems to be emerging is that they were a fairly dynamic species that went through local extinctions, expansions and migrations. It is quite exciting that so much was going on," he told BBC News."
The idea that they were a dynamic and occasionally migratory species, yet died out because they couldn't find GRASS seems a little odd. I mean, it's not like the last Ice Age ENTIRELY covered the planet with glaciers.
"They found that the species nearly went extinct 120,000 years ago when the world warmed up for a while. Numbers are thought to have dropped from several million to tens of thousands but numbers recovered as the planet entered another ice age."
So wait, I thought the theory was that they couldn't find food due to climate change? They almost went extinct when the climate warmed UP? Remember, we're talking about a climate SUBSTANTIALLY colder than today, with sea levels 120m or more below today's levels. The "warming" was to levels still quite a bit cooler than today....and grass is pretty common?
"The researchers also found that the decline that led to their eventual extinction began 20,000 years ago when the Ice Age was at its height, rather than 14,000 years ago when the world began to warm again as previously thought.
They speculate that it was so cold that the grass on which they fed became scarce. The decline was spurred on as the Ice Age ended, possibly because the grassland on which the creatures thrived was replaced by forests in the south and tundra in the north."
"But from about 20,000 years ago onwards, the population started the dramatic decline that led to its extinction, first on the mainland about 10,000 years ago, and finally on some outlying Arctic islands. The pattern seems to fit forcing by natural climate change: any role of humans in the process has yet to be demonstrated".'
This pattern fits no such thing. Maximum glaciation was reached about 22,000 years ago. Thus the mammoth population started its dramatic decline shortly after WARMING began. Now, granted, it's possible this was an inertial effect, the way it gets coldest in the morning as the sun is coming up, but the fact that the bulk of their decline was only 10,000 years ago (when the climate had significantly warmed and grasses were again widespread), their last remnants (that we know of) were on ARCTIC islands (why would they have gone North?), are both far better fits to the "human success killed them off" theories.
Frankly, this all sounds like bollocks to me, unless your sole goal was to try to spread more FUD that "warming" - of any kind, in any context, and from any start point - is "bad"...and that would be somewhere between politics and religion, not science.
-Styopa
Perhaps the Mammoths were too preoccupied trying to "save the earth" when it was themselves that needed saving!
Good news for hunters! By not hunting, you are actually contributing to a species demise!
Pull the trigger that makes you man...
Mammoth-type animals have actually appeared and gone extinct not once, but at about once every ice-age cycle.
That blew my mind when I heard it the first time.
That the last type the mammoths would have gone extinct because of climate change does not seem very far-fetched then, now does it.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Words have meaning.
We live in a society here!
Actually, had our ancestors been driving all of those SUVs, the mammoths might still be with us---assuming they aren't too tasty.
Right. Weather is a day-to-day phenomenon which could be hot, cool, trend up or down. Climate is something entirely different and unrelated to weather. Its a thing we have to take on faith that we are damaging beyond repair even when weather trends the other way.
Have gnu, will travel.
Global warming is the source of all problems according to the BBC. Our selfish behavior today can be directly linked back to killing the Wooly Mammoths 30,000 years ago, dontcha know.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I've seen a number of viable, competing theories about why the Mammoths died out, but for whatever reason, people tend to ignore the obvious, they might all have had a hand in it.
and can drive extinctions? Wait, I'm confused, I thought humans caused climate change.because, you know, theres no way that todays climate change can be natural.....
I submit that populations dying out LONG ago have damn all to do with populations dying out NOT so long ago.
Unless the newer ones tripped over the bones of the older ones and broke their necks.
North America still had plenty of mammoths running around, healthy as clams, 4500, 3000, even 1500 years ago. The continent was warming up then, not chilling down.
The natives who killed off (or not) the mammoths also killed off half of the other species in north and south america. So naturally suspicion falls on them.
If those wooly mammoths' digestive systems didn't create so much methane perhaps they wouldn't have caused so much global warming.
Know what the brown hairy stuff scientists have been finding between the wooly mammoth's toes is? Slow Cro-Mags
Interestingly enough, I read an article about human lifespans and how it changed drastically about 30,000 years ago, giving us grandparents who were able to help spread knowledge across generations. Maybe if people were living twice as long, then humans were eating twice as many mammoths.
It is not a nit that unless stratigraphers are able to decipher daily weather reports from fossils and the horizons they are found on, that you are talking about climate.
Because of the problems of getting absolute dates and their precision being low, there is always the danger that causes get confused when the error bars of dates overlap or, worse, when gradual changes get telescoped into seeming catastrophies. So, there is persistant change in climate from late Pliocene on that stresses mammalian communities the world over, and there are sudden events that interceed, such as the glacials and interglacials and the arrival of Mankind, to confuse matters.
This is not unlike the debate over the robustness of dinosaur populations before the K/T event. Few doubt that a big event ended the Cretaceous, but we now know that the diversity of the fauna was very much in decline for several million years prior. Even though it is common to call the K/T event a catastrophic mass extinction event, we have the terrestrial predator birds and all the modern birds to attest that these things are usually matters of degree, If there had been no asteroid or massive trapps eruptions in India, the decimation of the large fauna may have still happened. It might have been less total and taken a longer time, but the fact that the terror birds and the rest of modern birds made it through may simply be a demonstration of degree and not kind. This is more of a statistical process.