The attached graph shows that the previous interglacial (beginning about 145,000 years ago) was warmer than the current one (beginning about 20,000 years ago), so why did the woolly mammoth and the woolly rhinoceros survive the previous interglacial, but perish in the current and milder interglacial?
There is a nice explanation for this in a brilliant book by biological paleontologist, Thomas Halliday: "Overlands".
Plugging books that have nothing to do with a question is spam.
Does anyone here have an answer?
Here is a graph of sea levels over the last 200,000 years. Clearly, the Sangamonian interglacial was more severe than our current one. So why did the cold-adapted (woolly) mammals skate through it, but succumb 20,000 to 15,000 years ago?
Halliday's book is quite right in the very first chapter. He describes how climate change led to changes in the grassland Mammoth Steppe ecosystem. Not only mammoths were challenged but so were horses who also disappeared. The explanation being poor fodder as the grasslands became compromised. Extinctions are, in general, caused by changing climates and consequence changes in the niche that a species depends on. One interglacial period is not identical to another.
See also the attached that dispels the idea that hunting caused the extinction and talks about ecosystem change.
I think I've been clear: The question is about the Sangamonian interglacial.
How did the cold-adapted (woolly) mammals survive it?
No. That is all I can say. Anyone else can add an answer. But I am done. And I have a feeling that, for peculiar reasons, that's OK with you. And with me. Good luck.
Just so you guys know, I am not an "overkill advocate," to use David Meltzer's term. It is obvious to me that dismounted humans are not very good at killing large dangerous herbivores. And we do not have to look to Clovis sites to learn this. Before the Spaniards brought horses to America, humans on the Great Plains were riparian and mostly scratched out a living at subsistence farming, though they might have picked off a sick or elderly bison once in a while. The only other Great Plains predator, grizzly bears, were also riparian and not much better than humans at killing bison.
Native Americans with horses were a lot better. Historians compare Comancheria to the Roman Empire, but the Comanches never numbered more than about 40,000. Even when mounted, they still barely made a dent in the horizon-to-horizon herds of bison.
During the glaciation, long-horned bison were a minor player. Small family groups lived in fear of lion attack. Grizzly bears were far from being the top predator and humans were even farther down the pecking order, mostly living along the coast and making a living at fishing. It is probably by luck that these three were the ones to make it to the Great Plains of near modern times.
No 18th century naturalist would have been surprised to find herds of mammoths hunted by lions in the Great Plains. There was enough grass to support a menagerie comparable to that of Beringia 20k years past.
So why did all the other megafauna besides bison (in a reduced form) die at the end of the Wisconsinan glaciation, but not at the end of the Illinoian glaciation?
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