Last straw versus Blitzkrieg overkill: Climate-driven changes in the Arctic Siberian mammoth population and the Late Pleistocene extinction problem

Abstract

A set of radiocarbon dates on woolly mammoth were obtained from several regions of Arctic Siberia: the New Siberian Islands ( n = 68), north of the Yana-Indigirka Lowland ( n = 43), and the Taimyr Peninsula ( n = 18). Based on these and earlier published dates ( n = 201) from the East Arctic, a comparative analysis of the time-related density distribution of 14C dates was conducted. It was shown that the frequencies of 14C dates under certain conditions reflect temporal fluctuations in mammoth numbers. At the end of the Pleistocene the number of mammoths in the East Arctic changed in a cyclic manner in keeping with a general “Milankovitch-like” trend. The fluctuations in numbers at the end of the Pleistocene occurred synchronously with paleoenvironmental changes controlled by global climatic change. There were three minima of relative mammoth numbers during the last 50 000 years: 22 000, 14 500–19 000, and 9500 radiocarbon years ago, or around 26 000, 16–20 000, and 10 500 calendar years respectively. The last mammoths lived on the New Siberian Islands, which were connected to the continent at that time, 9470 ± 40 radiocarbon years ago (10 700 ± 70 calendar years BP). This new youngest date approximates the extinction time of mammoths in the last continental refugium of the Holarctic. The adverse combination of environmental parameters was apparently a major factor in the critical reduction in mammoth numbers. The dispersal of humans into the Arctic areas of Siberia no later than 28 000 radiocarbon years ago did not overtly influence animal numbers. Humans were not responsible for the destruction of a sustainable mammoth population. The expanding human population could have become fatal to mammoths during strong the minima of their numbers, one of which occurred at the very beginning of the Holocene.