Shift in Weaning Age Supports Hunting-Induced Extinction of Siberian Woolly Mammoths
EARTH doctoral student Michael Cherney and his advisor, Museum of Paleontology Director Daniel Fisher, say an isotopic signature in 15 tusks from juvenile Siberian woolly mammoths suggests that the weaning age, which is the time when a calf stops nursing, decreased by about three years over a span of roughly 30,000 years leading up to the woolly mammoth's extinction.
See the U-M News release here.
See the MLive Ann Arbor News article here.
See the Christian Science Monitor article here: Michael Cherney, doctoral student, and Daniel Fisher, director of the Museum of Paleontology, discussed their research of chemical samples from tusks of woolly mammoths that found signs the mammoths had accelerated their maturation process, a common evolutionary response to predation.