A new study that analyzes soil samples and DNA for Canada’s permafrost has found evidence that wooly mammoths and Yukon wild horses may have lived thousands of years longer than previously thought. The paper was published in the journal Nature Communications. Consists of a 30,000-year DNA record of past environments, based on cored permafrost sediments taken from central Yukon.
The researchers from McMaster University, the University of Alberta, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Yukon Government had a recent news release. It said their analysis reveals mammoths and horses were already in a quick decline prior to the climatic shifts of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. That happened between 11,000 and 14,000 years ago during a time when a number of large species disappeared.
The researchers explained that mammoths and horses didn’t disappear as a result of over-hunting as previously thought. The recent DNA tests show the wooly mammoth and North American horse were around until about 5,000 years ago during the mid-Holocene.
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