Mammoth step sheds new light on life in prehistoric Britain

Published on Wednesday 17 June 2009 22:07

WOOLLY mammoths, scientists have discovered, were roaming Britain 14,000 years ago – seven thousand years after they were thought to have died out.

New radiocarbon dating of remains of an adult male and at least four juveniles found in Britain

shows the iconic Ice Age beast, characterised by its spirally curved tusks, was wiped out by climate change rather than prehistoric humans hunting it to extinction.

The discovery of the bones in a Shropshire quarry at Condover in 1986 was one of the most important finds in Britain during the last 100 years, but the dating carried out at the time is now considered inaccurate.

Palaeobiologist Professor Adrian Lister said: "Mammoths are conventionally believed to have become extinct in north western Europe about 21,000 years ago during the main ice advance, known as the Last Glacial Maximum.

"Our new radiocarbon dating of the Condover mammoths changes that, by showing that mammoths returned to Britain and survived until around 14,000 years ago."

The analysis of both the bones and the surrounding environment, described in the Geological Journal, suggests some mammoths remained part of British wildlife long after they are conventionally believed to have died out.

Prof Lister is an expert in "extinction lag" where small pockets of a species survive for thousands of years longer than conventionally thought.

Technological advances during the past two decades meant he could study the radioactive decay of carbon in the bones and analyse both fossilised insects from the site and the surrounding sediment to give a more exact reading of their age.

Prof Lister, of the Natural History Museum in London, said that as the Shropshire bones are the latest record of mammoths in north-western Europe they also provide strong evidence to settle the debate as to whether their demise was caused by global warming or hunting.

He added: "The new dates of the mammoths' last appearance correlate very closely in time to climate changes when the open grassy habitat of the Ice Age was taken over by advancing forests, which provides a likely explanation for their disappearance.

"There were humans around during the time of the Condover mammoths, but no evidence of significant mammoth hunting." These would initially have been Neanderthals and later anatomically modern people.

Mammoths have a long history in Britain, with early varieties being extremely large but later animals getting notably smaller with most ending up the same size as a modern Indian elephant.

They were specialist grazers and their feeding activities created and maintained a unique environment known as "mammoth steppe" – a rich, open grassland also inhabited by other large herbivorous mammals, such as the woolly rhinoceros.

Although associated in popular imagination with cold conditions, mammoths do not appear to have been much limited by temperature.