Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news about fascinating discoveries, scientific developments and more. CNN — A piece of woolly mammoth skin excavated from the permafrost of Siberia contains fossil chromosomes, the first discovery of its kind, a new study shows. Researchers unearthed the 52,000-year-old remains in 2018 near … Read more
Valerii Plotnikov (left) of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha, Yakutsk, Russia, and Daniel Fisher of the University of Michigan examine a woolly mammoth excavated during a 2018 expedition. Love Dalen hide caption switch caption Love Dalen Scientists have recreated the three-dimensional structure of the woolly mammoth’s genetic material. The achievement, described … Read more
The woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island, from a tiny original population, persisted for 6,000 years despite genetic obstacles. Their sudden extinction remains a mystery, offering lessons for modern conservation efforts. Credit: Beth Zaiken Genetic analysis of the last woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island has revealed a population that managed to survive for 6,000 years despite … Read more
How did the woolly mammoth, an ambassador of the Ice Age, come to be trapped in modern-day Wrangel? … [+] Island? And what ultimately caused their extinction? New evidence suggests it wasn’t bad genetics as previously thought. getty Rising sea levels around 10,000 years ago transformed Wrangel Island into a last refuge for the woolly … Read more
By James Cirrone for Dailymail.Com and Reuters 9:44 PM June 30, 2024, updated 9:56 PM June 30, 2024 Scientists conducting a new genomic study claim that the last woolly mammoths on Earth became extinct due to an extreme storm or plague. If the species had not become extinct, they might still be there today. These … Read more
About 10,000 years ago, a small population of woolly mammoths became isolated on Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast. This isolation was the result of rising sea levels, a phenomenon we are all too familiar with today. Within just two generations, the woolly mammoth population on Wrangel Island grew from just eight individuals to a … Read more
For millions of years, mammoths roamed Europe, Asia and North America. About 15,000 years ago, the giant animals began disappearing from their vast range, until they survived on only a few islands. Eventually they disappeared from those shelters, too, with one exception: Wrangel Island, a landmass the size of Delaware, more than 80 miles north … Read more
The planet’s last surviving mammoth population was killed off by a random and sudden mysterious event, a new study has found. The population, which was isolated from the rest of the world for 6,000 years on Wrangel Island in present-day far northern Russia, was previously believed slowly exterminated by genetic inbreeding. But a new study … Read more
Woolly rhinos were once widely distributed across northern and central Eurasia before becoming extinct about 10,000 years ago. Credit: Mauricio Anton Advanced computer modeling shows that persistent human hunting contributed to the extinction of the woolly rhino by blocking their migration to new habitats during post-ice age warming. This underlines the continued impact of human … Read more