Named a new reason for the extinction of mammoths
Scientists from Australia, Canada, Norway, Russia and the United States found evidence in favor of the new causes of extinction of ecosystems of the late Pleistocene, including mammoths.
A study published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, briefly about it, reports the University of Adelaide (Australia).
Experts believe that around 11-15 thousand years ago, before the extinction of the Pleistocene ecosystems, began the melting of permafrost in Siberia and North America. This resulted in an increase of humidity, and in place of the usual animal pastures came swamps and peat bogs. As a result of such processes for the division of the populations of large animals, particularly mammoths.
To such conclusions scientists came after 51 radiocarbon Dating of bones of herbivores (e.g., bison and horse), were in antiquity in Pleistocene ecosystems.
According to scientists, the African Savannah, which productivity is comparable to the Pleistocene ecosystem, has survived to the present time is likely due to the monsoon that brings moisture from the sub-Equatorial region.
In the late Pleistocene, which ended approximately ten thousand years ago, in present-day tundra was a mammoth steppe-tundra. As shown by paleontological data, even in the cold periods, each square kilometer of the tundra had about ten tons of animal biomass: the relatively small area at a time could get on one mammoth, five buffaloes, six horses and ten deer.