By Stephen Beech via SWNS
Human hunters helped drive woolly rhinos to extinction around 12,000 years ago, suggests a new study.
Surviving groups of the horned big beasts became trapped in unsuitable habitats – leading to the species being wiped out, say scientists.
They believe the rhinos’ demise should act as a “clarion call” to the fragility of the remaining large-bodied grazers – and may provide valuable clues to help save them.
The international research team used state-of-the-art computer analysis to investigate the causes of the extinction of the woolly rhino towards the end of the last Ice Age.
The team, led by Professor Damien Fordham, reconstructed the population history of the species over a 52,000-year period.
They utilized “abundant” fossils, ancient DNA samples, and simulation models of population dynamics to uncover the potential roles of climate and hunting in the species’ demise.
Woolly rhinos (Coelodonta antiquitatis) once thrived in northern Europe, Africa and Asia.
The species could grow to about 3.5m long (11.5 ft), 1.5m tall (4.9 ft) at the shoulder and up to two tonnes – roughly the size of the modern white rhino.
Both males’ and females’ snouts were adorned with huge horns which could be more than a meter (3.2 ft) in length.
Fordham, of the University of Adelaide in Australia, said: “The analysis suggested that the causes of the extinction began long before the last Ice Age.
“Climatic cooling combined with anthropogenic pressures from hunting drove a south-eastward contraction of the rhinoceros range.
“Low but sustained hunting and weak dispersal constrained the woolly rhinoceros to the remaining suboptimal habitats in the southern end of the range.
“Unable to colonize new suitable habitats, the rhinoceros metapopulation destabilized at the beginning of the Holocene Epoch, leading to extinction.
“Modelling indicates that this ecological trap intensified after the end of the last Ice Age, preventing colonization of newly formed suitable habitats, weakening stabilizing metapopulation processes, triggering the extinction of the woolly rhinoceros in the early Holocene.”
The research team, whose findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), say today’s big beasts face similar threats as man-made environmental change has limited them to fragmented, suboptimal habitats.
Fordham said: “Our results provide a deeper understanding of the structure and dynamics of past extinctions of megafauna, simultaneously providing valuable lessons to safeguard Earth’s remaining large animals.”
He added: “The study reveals the progress of megafaunal extinction and could aid conservation efforts for threatened large animals.”
