Mammuthus primigenius (Woolly Mammoth)

[surroundx]

Rufí, I., Solés, A., Soler, J. and Soler, N. (2018). A mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius Blumenbach 1799, Proboscidea) calf tooth from the Mousterian of Arbreda Cave (Serinyà, NE Iberian Peninsula). Estudios Geológicos julio-diciembre 74(2): e079.

[surroundx]

Wang, Yue et al. (2018). Mechanistic modeling of environmental drivers of woolly mammoth carrying capacity declines on St. Paul Island. Ecology 99(12): 2721-2730. [Abstract]

[surroundx]

Serdyuk, N. V. and Maschenko, E. N. (2018). Parasitic diseases of woolly mammuth (Mammuthus primigenius Blumenbach, 1799). Proceedings of the Zoological Institute RAS 322(3): 306-314.

[surroundx]

Kirillova, Irina V. and Shidlovskiy, Fedor K. (2018). Aberrant woolly mammoth remains in the collection of the Ice Age Museum. Proceedings of the Zoological Institute RAS, 2018, 322(3): 285-305.

[surroundx]

Pfeifer, Sebastian J. et al. (2019). Mammoth ivory was the most suitable osseous raw material for the production of Late Pleistocene big game projectile points. Scientific Reports 9: 2303.

[surroundx]

Yamagata, Kazuo et al. (2019). Signs of biological activities of 28,000-year-old mammoth nuclei in mouse oocytes visualized by live-cell imaging. Scientific Reports 9: 4050.

[surroundx]

Wojtal, Piotr, Haynes, Gary et al. (2019). The earliest direct evidence of mammoth hunting in Central Europe – The Kraków Spadzista site (Poland). Quaternary Science Reviews 213: 162-166. [Abstract]

[Melanie]

Here’s why they may be considered ‘endangered.’
A global summit on the wildlife trade will consider the proposal, which could further restrict the ivory trade.

www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/08/woolly-mammoths-extinct-yet-endangered/

[surroundx]

Arppe, L., Karhu, J. A., Vartanyan, S. L. et al. (2019). Thriving or surviving? The isotopic record of the Wrangel Island woolly mammoth population. Quaternary Science Reviews 222: 105884. [Abstract]

[surroundx]

Kirillova, Irina V., Borisova, Olga K. et al. (2020). ‘Semi‐dwarf’ woolly mammoths from the East Siberian Sea coast, continental Russia. doi: doi.org/10.1111/bor.12431 [Abstract]

[Melanie]

Functional architecture of deleterious genetic variants in the genome of a Wrangel Island mammoth

Erin Fry, Sun K Kim, Sravanthi Chigurapti, Katelyn M Mika, Aakrosh Ratan, Alexander Dammermann, Brian J Mitchell, Webb Miller, Vincent J Lynch Author

Notes
Genome Biology and Evolution, evz279, doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evz279

Abstract

Woolly mammoths were among the most abundant cold adapted species during the Pleistocene. Their once large populations went extinct in two waves, an end-Pleistocene extinction of continental populations followed by the mid-Holocene extinction of relict populations on St. Paul Island ∼5,600 years ago and Wrangel Island ∼4,000 years ago. Wrangel Island mammoths experienced an episode of rapid demographic decline coincident with their isolation, leading to a small population, reduced genetic diversity, and the fixation of putatively deleterious alleles, but the functional consequences of these processes are unclear. Here we show that a Wrangel Island mammoth genome had many putative deleterious mutations that are predicted to cause diverse behavioral and developmental defects. Resurrection and functional characterization of several genes from the Wrangel Island mammoth carrying putatively deleterious substitutions identified both loss and gain of function mutations in genes associated with developmental defects (HYLS1), oligozoospermia and reduced male fertility (NKD1), diabetes (NEUROG3), and the ability to detect floral scents (OR5A1). These data suggest that at least one Wrangel Island mammoth may have suffered adverse consequences from reduced population size and isolation.

academic.oup.com/gbe/advance-article/doi/10.1093/gbe/evz279/5727767

[surroundx]

van den Hurk, Youri et al. (2020). The medieval mammoth: Biomolecular identification of mammoth remains from a Dutch medieval context. Lutra 63(1-2): 75-79.

[surroundx]

Fordham, Damien A. et al. (2021). Humans hastened the range collapse and extinction of woolly mammoth. bioRxiv preprint. doi: doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.17.431706

[surroundx]

Aznar-Cormano, Laetitia et al. (2021). Molecular sexing of degraded DNA from elephants and mammoths: a genotyping assay relevant both to conservation biology and to paleogenetics. Scientific Reports 11: 7227.

[surroundx]

Dehasque, Marianne et al. (2021). Combining Bayesian age models and genetics to investigate population dynamics and extinction of the last mammoths in northern Siberia. Quaternary Science Reviews 259: 106913.

[Melanie]

Late Quaternary dynamics of Arctic biota from ancient environmental genomics

During the last glacial–interglacial cycle, Arctic biotas experienced substantial climatic changes, yet the nature, extent and rate of their responses are not fully understood1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. Here we report a large-scale environmental DNA metagenomic study of ancient plant and mammal communities, analysing 535 permafrost and lake sediment samples from across the Arctic spanning the past 50,000 years. Furthermore, we present 1,541 contemporary plant genome assemblies that were generated as reference sequences. Our study provides several insights into the long-term dynamics of the Arctic biota at the circumpolar and regional scales. Our key findings include: (1) a relatively homogeneous steppe–tundra flora dominated the Arctic during the Last Glacial Maximum, followed by regional divergence of vegetation during the Holocene epoch; (2) certain grazing animals consistently co-occurred in space and time; (3) humans appear to have been a minor factor in driving animal distributions; (4) higher effective precipitation, as well as an increase in the proportion of wetland plants, show negative effects on animal diversity; (5) the persistence of the steppe–tundra vegetation in northern Siberia enabled the late survival of several now-extinct megafauna species, including the woolly mammoth until 3.9 ± 0.2 thousand years ago (ka) and the woolly rhinoceros until 9.8 ± 0.2 ka; and (6) phylogenetic analysis of mammoth environmental DNA reveals a previously unsampled mitochondrial lineage. Our findings highlight the power of ancient environmental metagenomics analyses to advance understanding of population histories and long-term ecological dynamics.

www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04016-x

[Melanie]

Process-explicit models reveal pathway to extinction for woolly mammoth using pattern-oriented validation


Abstract

Pathways to extinction start long before the death of the last individual. However, causes of early stage population declines and the susceptibility of small residual populations to extirpation are typically studied in isolation. Using validated process-explicit models, we disentangle the ecological mechanisms and threats that were integral in the initial decline and later extinction of the woolly mammoth. We show that reconciling ancient DNA data on woolly mammoth population decline with fossil evidence of location and timing of extinction requires process-explicit models with specific demographic and niche constraints, and a constrained synergy of climatic change and human impacts. Validated models needed humans to hasten climate-driven population declines by many millennia, and to allow woolly mammoths to persist in mainland Arctic refugia until the mid-Holocene. Our results show that the role of humans in the extinction dynamics of woolly mammoth began well before the Holocene, exerting lasting effects on the spatial pattern and timing of its range-wide extinction.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.13911

[Melanie]

Collapse of the mammoth-steppe in central Yukon as revealed by ancient environmental DNA

Tyler J. Murchie, Alistair J. Monteath, Matthew E. Mahony, George S. Long, Scott Cocker, Tara Sadoway, Emil Karpinski, Grant Zazula, Ross D. E. MacPhee, Duane Froese & Hendrik N. Poinar

Nature Communications volume 12, Article number: 7120 (2021)

Abstract

The temporal and spatial coarseness of megafaunal fossil records complicates attempts to to disentangle the relative impacts of climate change, ecosystem restructuring, and human activities associated with the Late Quaternary extinctions. Advances in the extraction and identification of ancient DNA that was shed into the environment and preserved for millennia in sediment now provides a way to augment discontinuous palaeontological assemblages. Here, we present a 30,000-year sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) record derived from loessal permafrost silts in the Klondike region of Yukon, Canada. We observe a substantial turnover in ecosystem composition between 13,500 and 10,000 calendar years ago with the rise of woody shrubs and the disappearance of the mammoth-steppe (steppe-tundra) ecosystem. We also identify a lingering signal of Equus sp. (North American horse) and Mammuthus primigenius (woolly mammoth) at multiple sites persisting thousands of years after their supposed extinction from the fossil record.

www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-27439-6

[Melanie]

Mummified baby woolly mammoth found by gold miner in the Klondike

yukon.ca/en/news/mummified-baby-woolly-mammoth-found-gold-miner-klondike

[koeiyabe]

"Atlas of Extinct Animals (in Japanese)" by Radek Maly (2022)