The Tragic End of the Woolly Mammoth
The Ice Age giant’s last stand on Wrangel Island
Four thousand years ago, when Pharaohs built the magnificent pyramids at Giza, the last remaining woolly mammoth died on Wrangel Island. Roughly the size of Crete, the island is in the Arctic Ocean, near the Russia-U.S. border. The majestic creature had lost its sense of smell. It had shrunk in size. Its iconic hair no longer kept the beast warm. Plagued by diabetes and infertility, the mammoth breathed its last.
A once mighty species was no more.
You may wonder how the beast, believed to be extinct by the end of the Last Ice Age ( around 10,500 years ago), survived so long. Though the mammoth vanished in most of Eurasia and North America by then, there were a few holdouts. Wrangel Island was the last one.
Why was the mammoth’s extinction so tragic?
What brought them to a remote island far away from the rest of the world?
These questions intrigued me, and I wanted to know more about the mammal's final days. Thanks to advances in genetic studies, we have answers. But before discussing the creature’s last stand on Wrangel Island, let’s review its evolutionary history to see how the woolly mammoth became synonymous with the Ice Age.
