Scientists discover that inbreeding probably felled the last woolly mammoths
In a study published in the journal Current Biology on Thursday, an international team of researchers announced they had sequenced the woolly mammoth's complete genome, using stem cells from an African elephant as a test. That is amazing in and of itself, but the results also reveal interesting new insights into the wooly mammoth's extinction.
As part of their research, the scientists compared DNA from two different woolly mammoths. One lived in Siberia about 44,800 years ago, and the other lived on Wrangel Island, where the last surviving mammoths died, about 4,300 years ago.
The researchers found that the mammoth on Wrangel Island "had long stretches of DNA with no variation between the mother's and the father's contributions," The Los Angeles Times reports. That indicates the Wrangel Island population probably started inbreeding, decreasing the number of genetic variations in the population and thus their chances for survival.
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