• Researchers in Germany have found that hunting significantly depleted mammoth populations in Western Europe around 30,000 years ago
• They studied the bones of mammoths, horses and reindeer
• Analysing isotopes ruled out climate change as a cause of population cuts
• All but a few isolated populations died out 20,000 to 10,000 years ago 

By Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline

Published: 05:26 EST, 9 February 2015

Researchers from the University of Tübingen, Germany and the Senckenberg Nature Research Society in Frankfurt, analysed bones, teeth and mammoth ivory from the Gravettian era between 30,500 and 22,000 years ago.

They found that woolly mammoth numbers declined, but that climate conditions as well as food and water supplies for the giant herbivores remained stable.

The woolly cousins of modern elephants roamed northern Eurasia and North America beginning 300,000 years ago, but some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, all but a few of the isolated island populations disappeared. 

By studying bones, researchers found that numbers of woolly mammoths declined, but that climate conditions as well as food and water supplies for the giant herbivores remained stable, indicating that hunting is the main cause. A depiction of a hunting party using a pitfall trap is shown…    [I know where my sympathies lie.]

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2945630/Are-humans-blame-mammoth-s-demise-Hunting-caused-numbers-plunge-30-000-years-ago-study-claims.html#ixzz3RMczSqj6
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