Flower Loss Doomed the Mammoths

Becky Nitschelm
Author: Stephen Ornes
Published: Feb 27 2014
 https://student.societyforscience.org/article/flower-loss-doomed-mammoths

Summary: A new study shows that mammoths may have gone extinct do to the decrease of there main food, a type of flower called forbs. Before this study, many scientist thought that between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago, mammoths roamed grass filled fields, eating mostly grass. However, the study has shown that in fact mammoth's diets were about 63% forbs, 27% grasses. To find out the diet of these mammoths, the scientists looked at fossilized feces. Therefore, at the end of the ice age, when everything was melting and the lands were become wetter, many of the forbs could not survive. Other plants like cotton grass, willows, and horsetails soon out competed the forbs. Another scientist however, does not agree with this hypothesis. Michael Hofreiter, a biologist from the University of Potsman, has a different idea. He believes that the mammoths did not die out because of the lack of forbs as food. He says that the biggest decrease of forbs happened after the mammoths had already become extinct.

Connection: This term in science we have been talking about both animals and plants and the effects of the environment on them. Because of the change in temperature, which caused the melting of ice and increased wetness, the forbs, in order to stay alive, had to adapt, just like the water plants that adapted to fill the open niches on land. However, because they could not adapt, they were out competed for, which also connects to our study of evolution. In addition, this article connects to the fact about organisms being reliant on one another. The forbs becoming less common could have caused the mammoths to become extinct