"Ancient genomes suggest woolly rhinos went extinct ..." Topic

…due to climate change, not overhunting

""It was initially thought that humans appeared in northeastern Siberia fourteen or fifteen thousand years ago, around when the woolly rhinoceros went extinct. But recently, there have been several discoveries of much older human occupation sites, the most famous of which is around thirty thousand years old," says senior author Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a joint venture between Stockholm University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History. "So, the decline towards extinction of the woolly rhinoceros doesn't coincide so much with the first appearance of humans in the region. If anything, we actually see something looking a bit like an increase in population size during this period."

To learn about the size and stability of the woolly rhinoceros population in Siberia, the researchers studied the DNA from tissue, bone, and hair samples of 14 individuals. "We sequenced a complete nuclear genome to look back in time and estimate population sizes, and we also sequenced fourteen mitochondrial genomes to estimate the female effective population sizes," says co-first author Edana Lord, a PhD student at the Centre for Palaeogenetics…"

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Amicalement
Armand

Interesting article, tango.

Grelber

Glad you enjoyed it my friend! (smile)

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Armand

Good article. Thanks for sharing. This has seemed the most likely cause of the megafauna extinction to me since I first read about the theory of Ice Age warming a few years back in a book on mammoths. I don't think that human populations were big enough to hunt these animals into extinction by themselves. The warming earth brought about habitat collapse in the northern hemisphere, and the small bands of hunters finished off the survivors.

Habitat collapse in what sense? Warmer temperatures resulting in a higher volume and diversity of plant matter for herbivores? I'm probably missing something.

A votre service mon ami!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

According to what I recall from the book on mammoths,the northern hemisphere was covered by "mammoth steppe," which consisted of mixed vegetation that the magafauna evolved to feed on. When the climate warmed up with the steppe was largely replaced by woodland from the north and grassland in the southern region. Animals such as mammoths did not eat trees and also could not retreat onto the grassland, since the plains were quickly filled with herd mammals, such as bison and aurochs, that out-competed the megafauna for grazing.

Thanks!.

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Armand