Mammoths swam to California, beating humans

Sunday, October 26, 2014, 1:08 PM - Fossils rescued from the sea prove that mammoths actually beat humans to California, swimming to the Channel Islands.

The remains belong to a pigmy mammoth—a species that disappeared from the islands about 12,000 years ago.

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Most experts believed that the extinction of the pigmy mammoths was caused by either climate change or the arrival of humans. This new evidence suggests that the pigmy mammoths survived the end of the Ice Age.

The fossils suggest that the mammoth died between 46,000 and 100,000 years ago. They also suggest that it wasn't the climate change that turned them small, like was previously thought. The prevailing theory was that ice melting trapped mammoths on the island where the lack of resources slowly made them decline in size.

Now scientists are rethinking all their pigmy mammoth related theories. What is certain is that the oldest mammoth fossils far outdate the human equivalent which means that mammoths had settled on the island far before humans.

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