Home The mammoth’s last stand: How the Wrangel Island herd died off
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The mammoth’s last stand: How the Wrangel Island herd died off

By Nicholas Wade, The New York Times March 6, 2017
2524

In a remote, mist-wrapped island north of the eastern tip of Siberia, a small group of woolly mammoths became the last survivors of their once thriving species. They fell extinct 4,000 years ago, having endured for some 6,000 years after the mammoths of the mainland had died off. From a message left in the tooth of a male mammoth, geneticists have now deciphered the probable reason for the population’s demise.

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