New study rules out the main reasons that would explain the disappearance of mammoths. Scientists are not sure they can decipher the riddle.
Does 10 thousand yearsthe last population of woolly mammoths was isolated on Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia. At that time these enormous mammals were besieged by the sea waters, which rose to such a degree that they separated that territory from the rest of the continent. Starting from this context, the hypothesis has been generated that The surviving mammoths were doomed to extinctionsince the few members and the low genetic diversity were not enough to sustain the species. However, a new study says that Neither of these were solid reasons for the disappearance of these animals.. In other words, those points would not serve as an explanation when pointing out what led to the extinction of the woolly giants. So, What happened?
A recent Cell publication maintains that, in effect, survivors show signs of inbreedingwhich resulted in a low genetic diversitybut also that something else must have happened for the mammoths to become extinct.
Follow the mystery
The authors of the study, to understand the genomic consequences of Wrangel Island bottleneck in the aforementioned population, analyzed the genomes of 21 mammoths woolly: 14 from the island and 7 from the mainland population. With that, the last few were covered. 50 thousand years of the specieswhich made it possible to understand how the genetic diversity of these animals had changed.
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Outside the grounds inbreedingthe specimens that remained on the island showed a Reduced diversity in the major histocompatibility complex, a group of genes known to play a key role in immune response of vertebrates.
Even with the above, and the fact that the island mammoths had moderately harmful mutations, the researchers showed that The population managed to purge many of these changes, slowly, which did little to help the preservation of the species.So, even if these ancient reasons for the mystery are removed, the extinction of the mammoths remains an enigma.
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«We don’t know why they became extinct after being more or less fine for 6,000 years.but we believe it was something suddenI would say there is still hope to find out why they became extinct, but there are no promises“says the lead author in a statement, Love Dalénwho is an evolutionary geneticist at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a joint collaboration between the Swedish Museum of Natural History and the Stockholm University (Sweden).
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