Why did mammoths go extinct?

Huli mammoths roam the earth tens of thousands of years ago leading live similar but colder to modern-day elephants of whom the asian elephant is the closest living descendant the early mammoths was a commonly found animal during the last ice age if the fossil record is to be believed mammoths fossils have been discovered on every continent except Australia and South America mammoths were similar in size to elephants but had adapted individual characteristics to live in the extreme cold weather of the Ice Age mammoths have narrow our schools smaller ears and shorter tails and perhaps the most obvious difference between them and elephants was that woolly mammoths were covered in a full coat of hair surviving in the cold dyed tundra of the Ice Age woolly 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 but then ten thousand years or so ago their numbers began to dwindle before eventually becoming extinct four thousand years ago but what really led to the disappearance of these large herbivores from the planet we take a look at the evidence and try to decipher what was the real cause of their demise reason number one climate change scientists have always been intrigued about what caused the extinction of the large mammals or megafauna which lived in the Late 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 up the world's climate become 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 mammoths were herbivores so 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 reason number two humans but while sudden changes to Earth's climate may have played a part in the demise of the mammoth 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 climate became more amenable 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 humans hunted mammals for their meat bones and skin some scientists believe that the poor habitat as a result of climate change combined with increased contact and hunting by humans as they increasingly entered the areas of habitat led to their eventual extinction the mammoth 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 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 reason number three meteorites or comets research in 2007 relieved that the demise of the woolly mammoth in North America at least may have actually been caused by the sudden impact of a meteorite or comet hitting 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 large mammals including the woolly mammoth in North America as a result of massive climate change that's all for today thanks for watching guys and please share and subscribe [Music]

Channel: WildCiencias

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Keywords: wildciencias, wild, animals, animals facts, mammoth, Why did mammoths go extinct?, science, What caused the extinction of woolly mammoths?, When did the last mammoth died?, mammoths, mammoths extinction, Why Did the Woolly Mammoth Die Out?, why mammoths die

Id: qoQFCrq7zlI

Length: 3min 45sec (225 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 29 2018