Woolly mammoths roamed the UK far later than is normally believed, according to a paper published today in the Geological Journal.

Adrian Lister, of the London Natural History Museum, says new carbon dating of bones first excavated in 1986 also shows climate change, rather than humans hungry for mammoth steak, may have been behind their eventual extinction.

“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’,” says Lister (press release). “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.”

This new date ties in with the takeover of grassy plains by forests. Mammoths preferred plains and were not very good in forests, as their tusks would get tangled in the branches (possibly).

“I think it was the change in vegetation caused by a change in climate that reduced the mammoth population down to a very small area,” says Lister (Daily Telegraph). “It could be in that situation that hunters had a hand in wiping out the few remaining patches.”

The new date comes from a new method of purifying samples for carbon dating, developed at the University of Oxford, he told the BBC.

“What they do is re-run the sample using the new method and obtain a more accurate date,” he says. “That’s what we did here.”

Kudos, as ever, to the Sun for their headline on this story: I Wool Survive. For some insights into what this study might mean about modern climate change, check in on the comments section of the Daily Mail coverage of this study.

Image: via Wikipedia