The question of when the woolly mammoth disappeared does not have a single, simple answer. These Ice Age animals vanished in a staggered decline spanning thousands of years. Their extinction was not a singular event tied to the end of the great cold. Understanding their final days requires looking at different mammoth populations, each with its own timeline for disappearing from the landscape.
The Main Extinction Event
The vast majority of woolly mammoths across Eurasia and North America vanished around 10,000 years ago. This continental-scale extinction coincided with the end of the last major glacial period. As the planet warmed rapidly, the habitat these animals depended on underwent a dramatic transformation, with the cold, dry grasslands that sustained them being replaced by expanding forests and wet tundra.
This environmental shift was a primary driver of their decline, shrinking their territory and food sources. At the same time, human populations hunted mammoths for food, and used their bones and tusks for tools and dwellings. The combined pressures of a changing climate and increased predation proved overwhelming for mainland populations, leading to their disappearance by the beginning of the Holocene epoch.
The Final Strongholds
Long after mammoths vanished from the continents, small, isolated groups survived for thousands of years on remote Arctic islands. These populations were shielded from the initial pressures that wiped out their mainland relatives. One such group on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea disappeared around 5,600 years ago, likely due to a shrinking island environment and loss of freshwater.
The last known population made its final stand on Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia, surviving until approximately 4,000 years ago. This means they were still alive during the construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza. Their demise is thought to be a result of factors related to their extreme isolation, as limited genetic diversity from inbreeding made the population vulnerable to a sudden event or environmental change.
How Scientists Dated the Disappearance
Scientists have pieced together the mammoth extinction timeline using analytical techniques on physical remains. The primary method is radiocarbon dating, which measures the decay of carbon-14 isotopes within organic materials like bones, tusks, and teeth. By analyzing these remains, researchers can determine the age of the specimen and map out where and when mammoths lived.
More recently, paleogenomics has introduced new tools for analysis. Scientists can now extract and analyze environmental DNA (eDNA) from ancient soil and lake sediment cores. This genetic material is shed by organisms and can remain preserved for millennia, allowing researchers to pinpoint the final presence of the animals in a region without finding their bones.