Friday, June 19, 2009

Mammoths Roamed Britain Until Just 14,000 Years Ago ... And We Didn't Kill Them Off

Chilling end? A lone mammoth in the Ice Age as visualised on the BBC Walking With Beasts programme. But the new research shows the beasts outlived the big freeze

From The Daily Mail:

Woolly mammoths survived in Britain thousands of years later than scientists realised - and may have been killed off by climate change rather than hunters.

A study of mammoth fossils found in Shropshire suggests the gigantic beasts became extinct in north-western Europe no more than 14,000 years ago - shaving a full 7,000 years off the timespan since they were thought to be alive.

It means the species may have survived the efforts of hunters at the height of the Ice Age only to be wiped out when their grazing land was overtaken by forest.

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