New Delhi: A new study has managed to unveil the reason why wolly mammoths did not survive for a longer period of time and became extinct.
The study reveals that they accumulated multiple harmful mutations in their genome which may have hampered their ability to survive, before the giant animals went extinct thousands of years ago, a new study has found.
Dwindling populations created a "mutational meltdown" in the genomes of the last wooly mammoths, which had survived on an isolated island until a few thousand years ago, researchers said.
Woolly mammoths were one of the most common large herbivores in North America, Siberia and Beringia until a warming climate and human hunters led to their extinction on the mainland about 10,000 years ago.
Small island populations persisted until about 3,700 years ago before the species finally disappeared.
Researchers from University of California, Berkeley in the US compared existing genomes from a mainland mammoth that dates back to 45,000 years ago, when the animal was plentiful, to one that lived about 4,300 years ago.
(With PTI inputs)
