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Abstract: We examine the temporal and geographic distribution of a worldwide sample of human and woolly mammoth radiocarbon ages (40–11,500 radiocarbon years BP) in order to examine how fluctuations in the two taxa may be related. These include human data from Europe, Siberia, and Australia and proboscidean radiocarbon ages from Europe, Siberia, and North America. We show that the geographic ranges of dated human occupations and mammoth remains do overlap across the terminal Pleistocene of the Old World, but concentrate in different areas. While frequencies of human dates in different regions covary with each other, mammoths do not. Increases in archaeological dates also fail to coincide with declines in mammoths. Rather, fluctuations in the two taxa remain largely uncorrelated during the run-up to the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM; ca. 18,000 radiocarbon years BP) after which both groups increase sharply until 13–12,000 BP. The decline and eventual extinction of the mammoths only occurs after this period, consistent with the premise that human impacts on now-extinct proboscidean populations occurred within the context of the sharp climatic shifts and widespread environmental reorganization of the Pleistocene–Holocene transition. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Despite decades of research, the roles of climate and humans in driving the dramatic extinctions of large-bodied mammals during the Late Quaternary period remain contentious. Here we use ancient DNA, species distribution models and the human fossil record to elucidate how climate and humans shaped the demographic history of woolly rhinoceros, woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison and musk ox. We show that climate has been a major driver of population change over the past 50,000 years. However, each species responds differently to the effects of climatic shifts, habitat redistribution and human encroachment. Although climate change alone can explain the extinction of some species, such as Eurasian musk ox and woolly rhinoceros, a combination of climatic and anthropogenic effects appears to be responsible for the extinction of others, including Eurasian steppe bison and wild horse. We find no genetic signature or any distinctive range dynamics distinguishing extinct from surviving species, emphasizing the challenges associated with predicting future responses of extant mammals to climate and human-mediated habitat change., (© 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved)