A secluded island has been confirmed as the last home to the woolly mammoth species. Wrangel Island, a federally protected nature sanctuary under the administration of Russia, is found in the Arctic Ocean between the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea.
In a recently published paper titled, "Thriving or surviving? The isotopic record of the Wrangel Island woolly mammoth population," an international team of scientists and researchers describe the mammoths' last stand that tragically ended some 4,000 years ago.
The researchers report that the demise of the great species may have been due to a combination of extreme events such as a major weather occurrence paired with the rise of ancient man. The authors also note that the isolation of the island also played a role in their extinction.
"It's easy to imagine that the population, perhaps already weakened by genetic deterioration and drinking water quality issues could have succumbed after something like an extreme weather event," says professor Hervé Bocherens from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, a co-author of the paper.
As noted in the paper, mammoths were an immensely large species and not just in size, they are also known to have covered great distances. Discoveries of mammoth remains span from as far as Spain to Alaska. Anywhere between 100,000 to 15,000 years ago, mammoths were flourishing, but as global temperatures began to rise, their free range began to shrink.
The researchers also note that the mammoths on Wrangel Island were likely stranded due to rising sea levels hiding any pathway they may have used to get back to the mainland. The mammoths would remain on Wrangel Island for 7,000 years.
Upon examination of carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and strontium isotopes from numerous mammoth-bone specimens ranging from various locales, the researchers discovered that while mammoth bones in the Ukrainian–Russian plains and those from St. Paul Island in Alaska suggest abrupt changes in the environment shortly before the demise of the mammoths, the specimens from Wrangel Island suggest a very stable and favorable habitat.
The researchers also found high levels of sulfur and strontium in the bones of the Wrangel mammoths. This suggests that the bedrock of the island was deteriorating. These elements eventually found their way into the water supply and likely lowered the quality of the mammoths' drinking water. This would prove to be fatal as large numbers of the species would die off. Add in an extreme weather event, such as ice, which would limit the mammoths' food supply, and you have a recipe for extinction.