For years we’ve taken it as gospel truth that the woolly mammoth
was hunted to extinction by our hairy ancestors. Some
scientists, however, are suggesting that what wiped out the
mammoth was not hunting, but trees. It is much easier to picture
the violent extinction of a species than the opposing scenario.
We can easily imagine fur clad hunters stabbing the giant beasts
with spears until one day there were no more left. You could
even picture the hair covered animals being too hot to survive
in the rising temperatures at the end of the ice age. It’s a bit
harder to imagine the mammoths being killed off by a lot of
trees. We’re not talking about any Lord of the Rings style
fighting trees or anything, although that would be a much cooler
article. The trees were just regular forests which expanded to
previously uncovered territory at the end of the last ice age,
but their marching expansion still spelled doom for the elephant
relatives. It all comes down to food. Mammoths thrived most in
large areas of frozen gr