Mammoths remained on Wrangel Island, about 80 miles from the Siberian coast, for about 6,000 years after they vanished from the rest of Asia, Europe and North America.Credit...Beth Zaiken
Carl Zimmer has an article about the last of the Woolly Mammoths over on the New York Times. A small population of mammoths on Wrangel Island held on until about 4,000 years ago. Wrangel Island is a large island, about the size of the US state of Delaware, just off the northern coast of Siberia. A recent paper in the journal Cell reconstructed the genetic history of this isolated herd of animals. The researchers found the population was founded by a tiny group, maybe as low as 10 individuals. Even though the group survived for 6,000 years, the animals suffered from a variety of genetic disorders.
Oliver Ryder, the director of conservation genetics at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, said that the study held important lessons for trying to save species from extinction today. It shows that inbreeding could cause long-term harm.
“The mammoth study allows one to examine that process over thousands of years,” said Dr. Ryder, who was not involved in the new study. “We don’t have data like that for the species we are trying to save now.”
Dr. Dalén and his colleagues examined the genomes of 14 mammoths that lived on Wrangel Island from 9,210 years to 4,333 years ago. The researchers compared the DNA from the Wrangel Island mammoths with seven genomes from mammoths that lived on the Siberian mainland up to 12,158 years ago.
The genome of any animal contains a tremendous amount of information about the population it belonged to. In big populations, there is a lot of genetic diversity. As a result, an animal will inherit different versions of many of its genes from its parents. In a small population, animals will become inbred, inheriting identical copies of many genes.
