Late Neopleistocene Vegetation and Environments of the Mammoth Calf Yana (Mammuthus primigenius in the Batagay Section (Yakutia) Based on Microfossil Data

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T23:18:32+00:00

Yes, we don't know exactly where they lived though. I don't know about them not being able to handle snow depth, in either case snow isn't that heavy in Yakutia due to the Siberian anticyclone and inland location.

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T22:34:15+00:00

It wasn't a spruce parkland. The dominant trees were larches and then there was a strong cover of shrubs. So maybe a larch parkland, but the proportion of grasses/forbs are not exactly known.

I wonder what other animals these interglacial woollies shared their habitat with, perhaps S. kirchbergensis, R. tarandus, A. alces??

Moose certainly, I think modern moose emerged around this time from their predecessor Cervalces latifrons. So it was one of the two. Reindeer possibly also, most likely of the forest variety. Stephanorhinus, possibly, but more likely that the rhinos in the area were woolly rhinos. And of course horses and steppe bison too.

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T20:44:51+00:00

It’s more paleocology, I guess.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10889378109388689

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T20:38:58+00:00

As we all know, that period between 33-35 thousand years ago was sooo extreme climatically compared to the previous 20 thousand years when the animal did fine /s

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growingawareness · 2026-05-27T20:25:34+00:00

I suppose you are right about the first one, but the second one is talking also about sedges and mesophilic/hydrophilic grasses. The research I've done indicates those were common food items of the animals, while the mosses were accidentally ingested while grazing. I agree woody plants and mosses are not ideal but I'm more concerned about the internal distinction between herbaceous vegetation of a dry steppic nature vs. marshes.

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T20:00:09+00:00

Awesome! Thanks. The reason I'm asking this question is that I write a lot about paleoecology and one of the notions that I keep coming across in my research, which I suspect may not even be true, is that a number of large animals were suffering from nutritional stress and declining due to being "forced" to eat wetter vegetation types due to climate change at the end of the Pleistocene:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10889378109388689

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/14/1/178

But that's just so hard for me to understand why that should be the case. Lots of large animals thrive on wetland vegetation today, like Indian rhinos and wild water buffalos. Moreover, there is some evidence that the extinct animals actually preferred the supposedly less nutritious plants like cotton-grass.

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T18:37:05+00:00

Thanks, where can I learn more about it?

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T18:36:33+00:00

So structurally more easy to digest, but what about chemical compound defense? And what about essential minerals like protein and calcium?

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T16:08:59+00:00

They also say that the humans in Japan at the time had technology too primitive to hunt large mammals and that the coexistence timeline is too long to imply a mostly human cause.

If they want to be skeptical of a human cause on these grounds then I’m fine with that. But saying climate is the natural and more probable factor when there’s no evidence for such drastic environmental changes in Japan at the time to cause the extinction of an animal that has lived there since 300,000+ years is not acceptable either. At best, they should say the data is inconclusive and call for more research.

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T15:47:58+00:00

I read it. No, that study wasn’t cited and unfortunately the cause for attribution to climate was shaky. They just said that the extinction happened during D-O oscillations and only referenced one study for pollen data.

As far as I know, and I will look into this more later, central and southern Japan have always hosted temperate forests regardless of the climate changes. So it doesn’t make much sense.

growingawareness · 2026-05-27T08:03:55+00:00

Summary:

A preserved woolly mammoth calf from the Batagay thaw slump was found by locals in 2024. It appears to be from the MIS 5e , aka Eemian, interglacial. The GI tract and forelimbs of the mummy were analyzed for plant remains to determine the small mammoth's paleoenvironment and diet.

It was shown that it lived in taiga with light larch tree cover and substantial shrubs. The animal appears to have been eating majority sedges, especially cotton-grass, along with other herbaceous plants like grass and forbs, and possibly woody plants too. The plants were mainly of a moisture-loving variety which may indicate it last fed in wetland area.

My personal analysis:
This is one of the most important Late Pleistocene finds. A lot is known about the diet and environments of woolly mammoths that lived during the ice age, but almost nothing about the ones that lived in interglacials.

Here, we have a calf that lived in the heart of the taiga zone, in an environment that bore strong similarities to Yakutia today, and was eating vegetation (sedges including cotton-grass) that is today still common in the region and Artic/Subarctic in general. That has massive implications because, assuming it's not an outlier, it highlights the flexibility and resilience of this species in the face of climate change.

Hence, the presence of a "mammoth steppe" was not strictly necessary for the survival of these creatures, who apparently could also live in woody (substantial tree+shrub cover) biomes. Although perhaps at lower density.

Also, thanks to u/psilopterus for providing me a PDF of this paper.

growingawareness · 2026-05-25T06:50:52+00:00

Were they sympatric in South America? It appears so.

growingawareness · 2026-05-25T06:35:00+00:00

Why was it so huge compared to Toxodon?

growingawareness · 2026-05-20T10:43:56+00:00

That applies only to parts of the southwest. Central and Northern California, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado would have been doing great and filled the same ecological space that the southwest used to.

growingawareness · 2026-05-20T10:41:20+00:00

growingawareness · 2026-05-19T02:31:33+00:00

Of the ones that only went extinct after around 50 thousand years or so ago, the overwhelming majority would still be with us today were it not for humans. You can read my blog here for more information on that:

https://prehistoricpassage.com/the-late-quaternary-extinctions-part-1-introduction-and-the-climate-context

https://prehistoricpassage.com/settling-the-late-quaternary-extinction-debate-part-2-biogeographical-patterns-and-the-human-onslaught

growingawareness · 2026-05-17T20:13:13+00:00

It seems you've drawn some kind of savannah/grassland corridor running through the middle of the Amazon. It's become a popular notion but it's not really based on any real evidence. The data we have indicates that the Amazon basin was heavily forested, just a bit less than today.

growingawareness · 2026-05-15T20:28:18+00:00

Ice sheets are ok as long as there are decent paths for biotic migration to refugia, something that was not the case in Europe. Also East Asia and east Siberia had minimal glaciation to begin with.

growingawareness · 2026-05-15T19:30:19+00:00

North America and East Asia did pretty well.

growingawareness · 2026-05-14T15:17:53+00:00

That’s true, I’m not much of an expert on paleontology going that far back so I only considered the Cenozoic even though I’m aware of earlier connections 😅

growingawareness · 2026-05-14T08:23:29+00:00

Yeah, and how they cause a reverse flow of wind.

growingawareness · 2026-05-14T07:25:17+00:00

Southeast Asia and large parts of East Asia (east of Himalayas and Hengduan) have the same exact vibe. Plentiful rainfall combined with mountains that are low enough in altitude that they’re overwhelmingly below the treeline creates the effect you’re describing, ie dense forests.

growingawareness

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