The new study suggests one of the last known groups of woolly mammoths died out because of a lack of drinking water. This comes from examining evidence collected from St Paul Island, which is located in the Bering Sea, off the coast of Alaska. A colony of mammoths lived here some 5,600 years ago.
The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was a species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. The woolly mammoth was approximately the same size as modern African elephants (other species of mammoth were larger).
The lack of drinking water was linked to a warming climate, signalling the end of the Ice Age. This caused lakes on the island to become shallower. The result was that the animals were unable to quench their thirst and the colony eventually collapsed. A further factor was an ingress of sea water and a consequential decline in freshwater, which also contributed to the reduction in available water. Mammoths probably required a high water intake each day. Modern elephants require between 70 and 200 liters of water daily, and mammoths were probably in need of similar quantities.
David Díez (@IndianaDiez) “The story about St. Paul Island mammoth’s dying out of thirst is touching but tells us little of how species become extinct in general.”
Lead researcher Professor Russell Graham told BBC Science: “As the other lakes dried up, the animals congregated around the water holes. They were milling around, which would destroy the vegetation — we see this with modern elephants.”
He further added: “And this allows for the erosion of sediments to go into the lake, which is creating less and less fresh water”, before summing up: “The mammoths were contributing to their own demise.”
The group of mammoths studied was one of the last. Most of the woolly mammoths on Earth died 10,500 years ago. The two main causes for the population collapse were environmental changes and human hunting (factors which continue to resonate with some diminishing populations of species today). Following this, a few groups survived until around 5,000 years ago when the species became extinct.
The new research is published in the journal PNAS, with the science paper titled “Timing and causes of mid-Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska.”
