MAMMOTH BONES CONTRADICT THEORIES SOME FRAGMENTS ONLY 3,700 YEARS OLD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 25, 1993                   TAG: 9303250205
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                LENGTH: Medium
MAMMOTH BONES CONTRADICT THEORIES SOME FRAGMENTS ONLY 3,700 YEARS OLD
A population of woolly mammoths survived 6,000 years after the beasts were thought to be extinct, roaming an island northwest of Alaska even as the Sphinx was being built in Egypt, a new study says.
The discovery is "one of the most extraordinary fossil finds of recent times," one expert said.
The beasts, oddly enough, may have been mini-mammoths.
Twenty-nine teeth and tooth fragments from mammoths on Russia's Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean were found to be as young as about 4,000 years, Russian researchers say in today's issue of the journal Nature. Tusk and bone samples were as young as about 3,700 years, the researchers said.
Mammoths were generally thought to have become extinct around 10,000 years ago, although some reports estimated 7,000 years ago.
The island beasts may help shed light on the debate over whether the mainland mammoths were exterminated by humans or environmental change, said study co-author Andrei Sher of the Severtsov Institute of Evolutionary Animal Morphology and Ecology, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
The mammals apparently survived because the island provided a suitable plant diet that had disappeared elsewhere, researchers said.
The teeth were found in 1991. They show that the island beasts were smaller than the well-known prehistoric woolly mammoth, which ranged widely through the Northern Hemisphere and stood about 10 feet tall at the shoulder.
The island beasts may have been a bit less than 6 feet tall, said Adrian Lister, a specialist in Ice Age mammals at University College in London.
The dates of the teeth and other fossils may be reconfirmed by independent testing.
Wrangel Island once was part of a land mass that also included Siberia and Alaska, the researchers said, but by 12,000 years ago it had become detached. The isolation apparently contributed to production of dwarf animals, they said.
The reason for their eventual demise is a mystery. "The miracle couldn't last forever," Sher said.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB