For five million years, woolly mammoths roamed the earth until they vanished for good nearly 4,000 years ago—and scientists have finally proved why.
The hairy cousins of today's elephants lived alongside early humans and were a regular staple of their diet—their skeletons were used to build shelters, harpoons were carved from their giant tusks, artwork featuring them is daubed on cave walls, and 30,000 years ago, the oldest known musical instrument, a flute, was made out of a mammoth bone.
Now the hotly debated question about why mammoths went extinct has been answered—geneticists analyzed ancient environmental DNA and proved it was because when the icebergs melted, it became far too wet for the giant animals to survive because their food source—vegetation—was practically wiped out.
The 10-year research project, published in Nature today, was led by Professor Eske Willerslev, a Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge, and director of The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen.
The team used DNA shotgun sequencing to analyze environmental plant and animal remains—including urine, feces and skin cells—taken from soil samples painstakingly collected over a period of 20 years from sites in the Arctic where mammoth remains were found. The advanced new technology means scientists no longer have to rely on DNA samples from bones or teeth to gather enough genetic material to recreate a profile of ancient DNA. The same technique has been used during the pandemic to test the sewage of human populations to detect, track and analyze COVID-19.
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