Study shows prehistoric people targeted female mammoths

Key Points:

• New research analyzing ancient DNA from 521 woolly mammoths across Eurasia and North America reveals that Ice Age humans predominantly hunted female mammoths, with females comprising 70% of hunted specimens compared to 30% males.
• This selective hunting may be linked to mammoth social structure, as female mammoths likely lived in predictable, matriarchal herds similar to modern elephants, making them easier targets than solitary, roaming males.
• Female mammoths were generally smaller and possibly easier to kill than males, who could weigh up to 6 tons and stand 11 feet tall, compared to 4 tons and 9.5 feet for females.
• Hunters likely used landscape features such as cliffs, bogs, or swampland to trap mammoths, employing spears, darts, or arrows to kill them, as evidenced by bone sites with embedded projectile points.
• Mammoths went extinct in mainland Eurasia and North America about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago due to climate change and possibly human hunting, with the last population surviving on Wrangel Island until about 4,000 years ago; one Wrangel Island mammoth showed a rare genetic condition analogous to Turner syndrome in humans.