WEBVTT - What Were the World's Last Woolly Mammoths?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.720
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain

0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:11.000
<v Speaker 1>Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, if we picture the demise of

0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:13.680
<v Speaker 1>the wooly mammoths, we might think of a herd of

0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.880
<v Speaker 1>shaggy elephants pursued by prehistoric humans, spears in hand and

0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:21.120
<v Speaker 1>dinner on the brain. And that may well be how

0:00:21.200 --> 0:00:24.560
<v Speaker 1>the vast majority of the massive herbivores met their fate.

0:00:25.120 --> 0:00:27.560
<v Speaker 1>But a study published in the journal Proceedings of the

0:00:27.640 --> 0:00:30.640
<v Speaker 1>National Academy of Science reports that one of the world's

0:00:30.680 --> 0:00:34.280
<v Speaker 1>final populations of wooly mammoth's was ultimately killed by a

0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:38.920
<v Speaker 1>lack of fresh drinking water. It's long been thought that

0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:41.880
<v Speaker 1>most of the world's wooly mammoth populations when extinct due

0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:45.080
<v Speaker 1>to a combination of climate change and human hunting, with

0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:47.560
<v Speaker 1>the last of their kind dying off on the mainland

0:00:47.640 --> 0:00:51.800
<v Speaker 1>around eleven thousand years ago, but a few stragglers held on.

0:00:52.600 --> 0:00:56.279
<v Speaker 1>For instance, one population survived until about four thousand, three

0:00:56.360 --> 0:00:59.040
<v Speaker 1>hundred years ago on a remote chunk of Arctic land.

0:01:00.000 --> 0:01:02.600
<v Speaker 1>The study in question dates the end of another nearby

0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:05.160
<v Speaker 1>group to five thousand, six d and fifty years ago,

0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.520
<v Speaker 1>give or take eighty years. The mammoths of Saint Paul

0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:11.679
<v Speaker 1>Island in the Bearing Sea between today's Russia and the

0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:15.080
<v Speaker 1>United States. The discovery is being touted as the most

0:01:15.120 --> 0:01:20.120
<v Speaker 1>accurately dated prehistoric extinction to date. As the post Ice

0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:23.840
<v Speaker 1>Age world warmed and sea levels rose, it seemed that

0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:27.640
<v Speaker 1>Saint Paul Island shrank in area, and its freshwater lakes

0:01:27.640 --> 0:01:32.000
<v Speaker 1>that sustained mammoths became scarcer. The researchers discovered something of

0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:35.240
<v Speaker 1>a domino effect, as more mammoths and other animals crowded

0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:39.880
<v Speaker 1>around fewer freshwater sources and trampled more vegetation around the lakes.

0:01:40.720 --> 0:01:43.720
<v Speaker 1>This contributed to an increase in dirt and sediment flowing

0:01:43.760 --> 0:01:46.760
<v Speaker 1>into the lakes, making what little water remained even less

0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:50.880
<v Speaker 1>suitable for drinking. In response to similar situations, modern day

0:01:50.880 --> 0:01:53.480
<v Speaker 1>elephants have been seen digging holes near to a sediment

0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.520
<v Speaker 1>filled lake in search of clean drinking water, a short

0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:59.760
<v Speaker 1>term fix, but one where the earth dug up muddies

0:01:59.800 --> 0:02:04.160
<v Speaker 1>the primary lake even more. The Asian elephant is the

0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:08.800
<v Speaker 1>wooly mammoth's closest living relative, though, if you were picturing

0:02:08.800 --> 0:02:12.040
<v Speaker 1>a group of towering mammoths, true to their names, staggering

0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:15.239
<v Speaker 1>around in search of drinking water. Tweak that image a bit.

0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:18.680
<v Speaker 1>The offshoot populations of wooly mammoths like those on St.

0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:22.320
<v Speaker 1>Paul were dwarf descendants of the mainstream wooly mammoth. They

0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:24.600
<v Speaker 1>were only a little taller than a full grown human.

0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:29.480
<v Speaker 1>Thanks to generations of inbreeding and evolutionary responses to island environments,

0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:33.480
<v Speaker 1>the scientists were able to discern how the lake environment

0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.880
<v Speaker 1>changed by analyzing core samples extracted from the lake bed.

0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:40.600
<v Speaker 1>They also tracked the change over time in fungal spores

0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:43.840
<v Speaker 1>known to grow in the dung of large mammals like mammoths.

0:02:44.560 --> 0:02:48.480
<v Speaker 1>They're particularly confident in the environmental aspect of their conclusions

0:02:48.520 --> 0:02:52.000
<v Speaker 1>because the island became isolated from the mainland about fourteen

0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:55.800
<v Speaker 1>thousand years ago, and there's no evidence humans ever lived

0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.359
<v Speaker 1>there and affected the mammoth population. The first humans to

0:02:59.400 --> 0:03:07.480
<v Speaker 1>step foot on island arrived by boat in seven CE.

0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:11.640
<v Speaker 1>Today's episode was written by Christopher Hasseiotis and produced by

0:03:11.639 --> 0:03:13.919
<v Speaker 1>Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other

0:03:13.960 --> 0:03:17.000
<v Speaker 1>mammoth topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff

0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:19.359
<v Speaker 1>is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for

0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:22.320
<v Speaker 1>my Heart Radio visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,

0:03:22.400 --> 0:03:24.240
<v Speaker 1>or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.