NEW clues have emerged in a puzzle that goes back to the ice age: why did the woolly mammoth go extinct? According to a new study published in the journal Science, answers can be found in the travel patterns of these lumbering giants. Researchers have tracked the movements of a male mammoth which roamed Alaska 17,000 years ago. During its lifetime, it covered nearly enough ground to circle the globe twice. University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Matthew Wooller — and others on the study — made their discovery with something the mammoth had left behind: a tusk. “We took five-centimeter sections along the entire length of the tusk. You can think of the tusk growing like a series of sugar ice cream cones stacked one inside of each other, continually kind of being built like that.” Analyzing hundreds of thousands of data points from the tusk, the researchers were not only able to track its movements but concluded that the mammoth had died of starvation. “It would have been very hard for mammoths to maintain this level of mobility following the significant environmental changes that occurred after the last ice age.” Those changes would have seen the loss of grazing areas, which were turning to forest. According to the researchers, the study does more than just satisfy curiosity about extinct ice age creatures. It also shines a light on today’s rapidly changing Arctic and the challenges facing the animals living there.(SD-Agencies) | 