Re: Mammoths hit by meteorites



Damien Valentine wrote:
How long were there woolies in North America, though? If the case
happens to be that they managed to last through a couple of
interglacials -- and they might not have, I really don't know -- would
the Holocene have been that much of a shock?

This is a good one.
And I went looking and one source said around 150,000 years ago, and another said less than 500,000 years ago.
Two other species of mammoths got here far earlier though, between 1.5 to 1.8 million years ago.
They would only be able to get into North America during a ice age, as they would have to cross over a land bridge or when the Bering Strait was a lot thinner or frozen over.
Things aren't helped by the fact that all three species of mammoth as well as mastodons had fur on them, and although mastodons are a separate branch of the elephant family, the only way you can easily tell them apart is by the shape of the tusks:
http://www.mammothsite.com/MammothInformation.html
I wasn't kidding about them having trouble with North Dakota's present climate in summer; woolly mammoths had a foot-thick fat layer under their hide for insulation.

Pat
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