Mammuthus) is an extinct genus of mammals of the order Proboscidea, which existed from the Pliocene (5 million years ago) to the beginning of the Holocene (about 4 thousand years ago).
Why did mammoths become extinct
For a long time it was believed that it was people who caused the disappearance of mammoths, but scientists have found that the main reason is a sharp climate change.
The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Nature.
The study found that the animals became extinct due to a lack of food caused by melting Arctic ice.
The melting of Arctic ice led to an increase in humidity, the formation of lakes, rivers and swamps and the almost complete disappearance of the vegetation on which the mammoths fed.
Large animals were unable to quickly adapt to a meager diet after a sudden change in the landscape.
However, scientists from Canada and the US have read ancient DNA from sediments sampled in the Klondike and found that wild horses and woolly mammoths may have gone extinct in the region less than six thousand years ago.
They emphasized that it is certain that these animals were present in the region until at least 9,700–9,200 years ago.
Previously, we talked about how animals keep warm in winter.
