What is it about?
Using computer models, fossils and ancient DNA, we traced 52,000 years of population history of the woolly rhinoceros across Eurasia at a resolution not previously considered possible. This showed that from 30,000 years ago, a combination of cooling temperatures and low but sustained hunting by humans caused the woolly rhinoceros to contract its distribution southward, trapping it in a scattering of isolated and rapidly deteriorating habitats at the end of the Last Ice Age. As Earth thawed and temperatures rose, populations of woolly rhinoceros were unable to colonise important new habitats opening up in the north of Eurasia, causing them to destabilise and crash, bringing about their extinction.
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Why is it important?
Our findings reveal how climate change and human activities can lead to megafauna extinctions. This understanding is crucial for developing conservation strategies to protect currently threatened species, like vulnerable rhinos in Africa and Asia. By studying past extinctions, we can provide valuable lessons for safeguarding Earth’s remaining large animals
Perspectives
Our discovery that humans contributed to woolly rhinoceros’ extinction contradicts previous research that found humans had no role – despite the animal co-occurring with humans for tens of thousands of years prior to its extinction. By directly capturing demographic responses of woolly rhinoceros to humans and climate at fine spatiotemporal resolutions in our population reconstructions, we were able to pinpoint important and largely overlooked roles that low levels of hunting had on their timing and location of extinction.
Damien Fordham
University of Adelaide
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: 52,000 years of woolly rhinoceros population dynamics reveal extinction mechanisms, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, June 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2316419121.
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