For the past 700,000 years Earth’s climate has fluctuated with ice ages occurring about every 100,000 years with short warm spells or “interglacials” of about 10,000 years between them. Mammoths were able to migrate from Africa to around 6.7 million years ago and stay for about 4 million years before moving up into Southern Europe. But because the mammoth lived in the Arctic, many remains of the species have been found preserved in the permafrost. Mammoths survived in the climate until nearly 1650 BC before they became extinct. Scientists say the extinction of the mammoths was a combination of climate change and human intervention. Neanderthals hunted the large animals about 10,000 to 40,000 years ago encouraging the megafauna extinction. In the Americas nearly 75 percent of all animals weighing more than 100 pounds disappeared after humans arrived. At this time, scientists are still unsure of which of the two factors killed off the mammoth discovered in Oklahoma but are performing further
For the past 700,000 years Earth’s climate has fluctuated with ice ages occurring about every 100,000 years with short warm spells or “interglacials” of about 10,000 years between them. Mammoths were able to migrate from Africa to around 6.7 million years ago and stay for about 4 million years before moving up into Southern Europe. But because the mammoth lived in the Arctic, many remains of the species have been found preserved in the permafrost. Mammoths survived in the climate until nearly 1650 BC before they became extinct. Scientists say the extinction of the mammoths was a combination of climate change and human intervention. Neanderthals hunted the large animals about 10,000 to 40,000 years ago encouraging the megafauna extinction. In the Americas nearly 75 percent of all animals weighing more than 100 pounds disappeared after humans arrived. At this time, scientists are still unsure of which of the two factors killed off the mammoth discovered in Oklahoma but are performing further