Morphological Characters of the Mammoth: An Adaptation to the Arctic-Steppe Environment

Kubiak, Henryk

doi:10.1016/b978-0-12-355860-2.50028-4

Cited by 10 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Elephants prefer clear water and will dig "wells" near sediment-choked water sources to filter and clarify drinking water (23). St. Paul mammoths may have needed even more water than modern elephants for evaporative cooling during the Holocene interglacial (24), because many of the morphological and physiological adaptations for M. primigenius were for retaining heat (25,26). As island size decreased, freshwater resources on St. Paul became more limited.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Timing and causes of mid-Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska

Graham

Belmecheri

Choy

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

153

169

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Relict woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) populations survived on several small Beringian islands for thousands of years after mainland populations went extinct. Here we present multiproxy paleoenvironmental records to investigate the timing, causes, and consequences of mammoth disappearance from St. Paul Island, Alaska. Five independent indicators of extinction show that mammoths survived on St. Paul until 5,600 ± 100 y ago. Vegetation composition remained stable during the extinction window, and there is no evidence of human presence on the island before 1787 CE, suggesting that these factors were not extinction drivers. Instead, the extinction coincided with declining freshwater resources and drier climates between 7,850 and 5,600 y ago, as inferred from sedimentary magnetic susceptibility, oxygen isotopes, and diatom and cladoceran assemblages in a sediment core from a freshwater lake on the island, and stable nitrogen isotopes from mammoth remains. Contrary to other extinction models for the St. Paul mammoth population, this evidence indicates that this mammoth population died out because of the synergistic effects of shrinking island area and freshwater scarcity caused by rising sea levels and regional climate change. Degradation of water quality by intensified mammoth activity around the lake likely exacerbated the situation. The St. Paul mammoth demise is now one of the best-dated prehistoric extinctions, highlighting freshwater limitation as an overlooked extinction driver and underscoring the vulnerability of small island populations to environmental change, even in the absence of human influence. mammoth | extinction | Holocene | St. Paul Island | ancient DNA

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Timing and causes of mid-Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska

Graham

Belmecheri

Choy

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

153

169

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“…The lateral divergence of the enamel plates from the rather straight inner (lingual) margin of the tooth (Fig. 1) indicates that it is from the right side (Kubiak 1965). Data in Table 1 indicate that the tooth is a third molar (M3).…”

Section: Referred Specimenmentioning

confidence: 94%

A mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) tooth from late Wisconsin deposits near Embden, North Dakota, and comments on the distribution of woolly mammoths south of the Wisconsin ice sheets

Harington¹,

Ashworth²

1986

Can. J. Earth Sci.

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A well-preserved third molar of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthusprimigenius) was recovered from sand and gravel forming the highest (Herman) prominent strandline of Lake Agassiz near Embden in western Cass County, North Dakota. The Herman strandline is estimated to have formed about 11 500 years BP, and presumably the tooth is of similar age. Perhaps the animal lived in a tundra-like area near the Lake Agassiz shoreline.Additional evidence suggests that woolly mammoths occupied a tundra-like range south of the Wisconsin ice sheets extending from southern British Columbia to the Atlantic continental shelf off Virginia.Une troisikme molaire bien prCservCe d'un mammouth ii long poil (Mammuthus primigenius) a Ct C recueillie dans les sables et graviers qui foment la ligne de rivage supCrieure dominante (Herman) du lac Agassiz, p&s dlEmbden, dans la partie occidentale du comtC Cass, Dakota du Sud. La ligne de rivage Herman s'est formCe il y a environ 11 500 ans Av.P., et la dent est considCn5e prCsumCment d'ige similaire. Probablement que I'animal vivait dans une region de type toundra prks de la rive du lac Agassiz.Des enseignements supplCmentaires rCvklent que les mammouths ii long poil occupaient une aire de type toundra, au sud des nappes glaciaires du Wisconsin, laquelle s'Ctendait du sud de la Colombie-Britannique jusqu'ii la plate-forme continentale de 1'Atlantique en Virginie.[Traduit par la rewe]Can. J. Earth Sci. 23, 909 -918 (1986)

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“…Long‐distance seasonal migration has been proposed for mammoth to overcome winter food shortages, similar to African elephants (Olivier , Vereshchagin and Baryshnikov ), but this strategy was not available to the isolated St. Paul Island population. Woolly mammoths have tusks longer than 3 m (Vereshchagin and Baryshnikov ), and Kubiak () argued that these long tusks assist woolly mammoths in feeding by stripping barks from trees, scraping and breaking ice in snowless winter, and removing snow cover. Windblown winter range is another possibility for mammoth on St. Paul Island to get forage during fasting periods (Guthrie ), considering that the island has surface wind speeds as fast as 8 m/s in the winter based on NCDC observations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Some traits help woolly mammoths adapt to cold environments that are not considered in the NM simulations presented here. Woolly mammoths have smaller ears than African and Asian elephants, which help to reduce heat loss by minimizing vein surface to the atmosphere (Kubiak ). Not including it causes the simulated mammoths to lose more heat than their real‐world counterparts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…NM assumed no matting, which roughly approximates reality and helps mammoths “conserve” heat. Additionally, the multiple layers of hairs discussed above, in which the undercoat is composed of thinner, shorter, but denser wools, reduces heat loss, and would keep woolly mammoths warmer in cold environments (Kubiak ). A fuller description of these cold‐adapted traits in the NM simulations would shift the simulated thermoneutral temperature range to lower temperatures, leading to decrease in simulated metabolic rate at any temperature (because woolly mammoths could be less active and still maintain a neutral core temperature in colder environments), decrease in individual mammoth vegetation and freshwater consumption, increase in island carrying capacity, and a lower risk of extinction.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mechanistic modeling of environmental drivers of woolly mammoth carrying capacity declines on St. Paul Island

Wang

Porter

Mathewson

et al. 2018

Ecology

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On St. Paul Island, a remnant of the Bering Land Bridge, woolly mammoths persisted until 5,600 yr BP with no known predators or competitors, providing a natural system for studying hypothesized environmental drivers of extinction. These include overheating due to rising temperatures, starvation, and drought. Here, we test these hypotheses using Niche Mapper and LPJ‐GUESS to mechanistically estimate mammoth metabolic rates and dietary and freshwater requirements and, from these, estimate variations in island carrying capacity on St. Paul for the last 17,000 yr. Population carrying capacity may have been several hundred individuals at the time of initial isolation from the mainland. Adult mammoths could have fasted for two to three months, indicating a necessary ability to access snow‐buried forage. During the Holocene, vegetation net primary productivity increased, but shrinking island area overrode increased net primary productivity (NPP), lowering carrying capacity to ~100 individuals. NPP and freshwater availability alternated as critical limiting factors for this island population during the environmental changes of the late Pleistocene and Holocene. Only two or three individuals could have been sustained by the freshwater surplus in crater lakes (up to 18 individuals under the most optimistic parameter sensitivity experiments), suggesting that the St. Paul mammoth population was highly dependent on coastal freshwater sources. The simulations are consistent with the available proxy data, while highlighting the need to retrieve new paleohydrological proxy records from the coastal lagoons to test model predictions. More broadly, these findings reinforce the vulnerability of island megaherbivore populations to resource limitation and extinction.

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Morphological Characters of the Mammoth: An Adaptation to the Arctic-Steppe Environment

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Timing and causes of mid-Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska

Timing and causes of mid-Holocene mammoth extinction on St. Paul Island, Alaska

A mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) tooth from late Wisconsin deposits near Embden, North Dakota, and comments on the distribution of woolly mammoths south of the Wisconsin ice sheets

Mechanistic modeling of environmental drivers of woolly mammoth carrying capacity declines on St. Paul Island

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