Where did mammoths come from? What kind of life did they lead? Why are they extinct? The scientific community has been fighting over these riddles for several centuries. And each new study refutes the previous one.
Yakut treasures
The beginning of everything was laid by the burgomaster of Amsterdam Witsen, when in 1692 he first described the untouched carcass of a mammoth found in Yakutia. He did not know that he would give new life to an extinct animal species. Modern scientists are increasingly calling Yakutia the birthplace of mammoths. It may not be a historical homeland, but at least the place with the highest concentration of mammoth population in the past.
In recent years, most animal remains have been found here (according to statistics, about 80%), including well-preserved ones. The scientific world was especially struck by the latest find - a 60-year-old female mammoth. But its uniqueness is not so much in the safety of tissues as in the liquid blood contained in them. This finding could provide scientists with new knowledge about the genetic and molecular composition of primitive animals.
Mammoths begin to die out due to warming
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More and more scientists have been inclined to this version recently. Dr. Dale Guthrie from the University of Alaska agrees with her, who made radiocarbon dating of the remains of animals and people that lived more than 10 thousand years ago. According to Guthrie, climate change has transformed a dry and cold area into a wetter and warmer one, which in turn led to a modification of vegetation - to this mammoths simply did not have time to adapt.
Other scientific evidence supports the decline in tundra forests, the main habitat for mammoths. Like reindeer, mammoths, depending on the season, roamed in search of their usual food - in the summer they moved to the north, and in the winter to the southern regions. And then one day they faced a shortage of tundra vegetation.
In 1900, on the banks of the Berezovka River, a mammoth carcass was found practically untouched by time and predators. Other similar remains were later found. Several details, including the unmulked grass, suggested that the animals died suddenly. The version of the murder disappeared immediately - there were no signs of damage. Scientists have long puzzled over this riddle and finally came to an unexpected conclusion - the animals died, falling into the melted wormwood. Over time, researchers were able to find more and more animals that ended up in the place of the old river bed. The rise in temperature played a cruel joke on them.
And here is another fact in favor of the version of the extinction of animals due to global warming. The researchers found that in the process of climate change, mammoths also changed their size. During the glacial periods (Zyryan and Sartan times), they became larger, and during periods of global warming (Kazantsevo and Kargin times), they became smaller. From this it follows that it was the cold that was more preferable for mammoths than warm.
People did not hunt mammoths
According to one hypothesis, mammoths were exterminated by hunters, at least, the British naturalist Alfred Wallace was inclined to this version. Indeed, at the sites of ancient people, many products are found from the skin and tusks of mammoths. We also know about the hunting of mammoths from school textbooks. However, modern researchers argue that humans did not hunt mammoths, but only finished off sick and infirm animals. The fact is that during warming, the groundwater that rose to the top washed out minerals from the soil, which were part of the plant food of mammoths. The fragility of the bones, which appeared as a result of a poor diet, made the giants vulnerable to humans.
A. V. Bogdanov in his book "Secrets of a Lost Civilization" argued the impossibility of hunting mammoths. A modern elephant has a skin of about 7 centimeters, while a mammoth, due to a layer of subcutaneous fat, was even thicker. “Try it yourself with a stick and a stone to pierce the skin, which does not burst even from the tusks of five-ton males,” the writer says.
But then Bogdanov is even more convincing. Among the reasons, he names the very tough and sinewy mammoth meat, which was almost impossible to eat, as well as the actions that are unbearable even for a large group of people, necessary for a successful hunt. To catch an individual of even a medium size, you need to dig a hole of at least 7 cubic meters, which is not realistic with primitive tools. It is even more difficult to drive a mammoth into a hole. These are herd animals and when trying to discourage at least a cub from the herd, the hunters risked being trampled by multi-ton carcasses.
Contemporaries of the Egyptian pyramids
Until recently, it was believed that mammoths disappeared from the face of the earth 10,000 years ago. But at the end of the 20th century, the remains found on Wrangel Island significantly corrected the dating. Based on the data obtained, scientists have established that these individuals died about 3700 years ago. “Mammoths inhabited this island when the Egyptian pyramids were already standing and the Mycenaean civilization was flourishing,” says Frederic Paulsen to investigate. The mammoths of Wrangel Island lived when most of these animals on the planet had long disappeared. What made them move to the island? This is still a mystery.
Holy tooth
In the Middle Ages, people who unearthed the bones of mammoths had no idea who they belonged to and often mistook them for the remains of kinocephalous living in legendary times - a huge growth of creatures with a dog's head and a human body. For example, in Valencia, the molar tooth of a mammoth was a sacred relic, according to legend, belonging to the "psoglav" Christopher - a holy martyr revered by the Catholic and Orthodox Church. It is recorded that during processions back in 1789 the canons, along with the tooth, also wore the thigh bone of a mammoth, passing it off as a fragment of the saint's hand.
Relatives
Mammoths are close relatives of elephants. This is evidenced by their scientific name Elefasprimigenius (translated from Latin as "the first-born elephant"). According to one version, the elephant is the result of the evolution of a mammoth, which has adapted to a warmer climate. Perhaps this is not so far from reality, because the mammoths of the later time in their parameters corresponded to the Asian elephant.
But German scientists compared the DNA of an elephant and a mammoth, and came to a paradoxical conclusion: the mammoth and the Indian elephant are two branches that descended from the African elephant about 6 million years ago. Indeed, recent studies have shown that the ancestor of the African elephant lived on earth more than 7 million years ago, and therefore this version does not seem fantastic.
"Resurrect" the giant
Scientists have been trying to "resurrect" the mammoth for quite a long time. So far to no avail. The main obstacle to the successful cloning of an extinct animal, according to Semyon Grigoriev (head of the P. A. Lazarev Mammoth Museum), is the lack of source material of adequate quality. But, nevertheless, he is convinced of the good prospects for this undertaking. He is pinning his main hopes on the recently removed female mammoth with preserved liquid blood.
While Russian scientists are trying to recreate the DNA of an ancient animal, Japanese experts have abandoned ambitious plans to populate the Russian Far East with mammoths in view of the futility of the idea of their "resurrection". Who was right - time will tell.