“Kill, chill, or ill?

What happened to
ice age mammals?”
 SUMMERY: “Kill, chill, or ill? What happened to
ice age mammals?”

The ongoing mystery about what killed

off some of the largest modern
mammals centers on the three theories:
human hunting (“kill”), climate change
(“chill”), and plague (“ill”). A fourth
school of thought holds that many
factors converged to cause mass
extinctions during the last ice age.
 Kill School
Dr. Paul Martin, professor of
geosciences at the University of Arizona’s
Desert Laboratory, says human hunters
dramatically changed the landscape of
North America in the past 13,000 years,
wiping out some40 species of large
mammals, including mammoths,
mastodons, native camels, ground sloths,
short-faced bears, and saber-tooth cats.
 Chill School
Dr. Kenneth B. Tankersley has explored underground
caverns worldwide in search of evidence that climate
changes caused the extinction of massive ice age
mammals. His research suggests that Ice Age animals
were killed off because they moved around when the
temperature changed. Dr. Tankersley writes:…This
situation is the direct result of individual species
response to climate change. In other words, each
species has its own unique response to change. With
the rapid and profound global warming, some animals
were able to move, others became smaller, and some
became extinct.
 Ill school
The curator of the Department of Mammalogy
at the American Museum of Natural History in
New York, Dr. Ross MacPhee maintains that
many “mega-mammal” extinctions in the past
40,000 years may have been causes by
diseases introduced by humans or animals
that traveled with them. MacPhee argues that
humans were not expert enough hunters to
completely kill off species of animals, so the
animals must have suffered from disease.
 Combination School
 Dr. David Burney, associate professor in the
Department of Biological Studies at Fordham
University, is convinced that no cause can be
pinpointed as the sole reason for the mega beast
extinctions.
 Furthermor, Dr. Burney is not convinced that disease
could have killed so many species. “A disease that
kills all species quickly is known to science.” he
argues. Even so, he explains, disease could have
killed some species, possibly carried by another
species that became sick, but did not die, of the
disease.
Information
Baluchiterium /Paraceratherium/
 Paraceratherium is an extinct genus of hornless rhinoceros, and one of the largest

terrestrial mammals that has ever existed. It lived from the early to late Oligocene epoch

(34–23 million years ago), its remains have been found across Eurasia between China and

the Balkans. It is classified as a member of the hyracodont subfamily Indricotheriinae.

Paraceratherium means "near the hornless beast", in reference to Aceratherium, a genus

that was once thought similar.

 Weight 15 to 20 tonnes at most, 11 tonnes at least

 The shoulder height was about 4.8 metres

 The length about 7.4 metres

 The legs were long and pillar-like.

 The long neck supported a skull that was about 1.3 metres long. It had large, tusk-like

incisors and a nasal incision that suggests it had a prehensile upper lip or proboscis.
Aceratherium
 Woolly mammoth
 The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) diverged from the steppe mammoth about
400,000 years ago in East Asia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. Mammoth remains
had long been known in Asia before they became known to Europeans in the 17th century. The
origin of these remains was long a matter of debate, and often explained as being remains of
legendary creatures. The mammoth was identified as an extinct species of elephant by Georges
Cuvier in 1796.

 The woolly mammoth was roughly the same size as modern African elephants.

Males reached shoulder heights between 2.7 and 3.4 m and weighed up to 6 metric tons.

Females reached 2.6–2.9 m in shoulder heights and weighed up to 4 metric tons.

A newborn calf weighed about 90 kilograms.

 The woolly mammoth was well adapted to the cold environment during the last ice age. Its behavior
was similar to that of modern elephants. The diet of the woolly mammoth was mainly grass and
sedges. Individuals could probably reach the age of 60. Its habitat was the mammoth steppe, which
stretched across northern Eurasia and North America.
Platybelodon /Shovel tusker or flat-spear tusk/
 Platybelodon (flat-spear tusk) was a genus of
large herbivorous mammal related to the
elephant. It lived during the late Miocene Epoch/
23.03 to 5.333 million years ago/ in Asia and
the Caucasus.
 Platybelodon was very similar to Amebelodon,
another, closely related gomphothere genus.
Due to the shape of the two lower teeth, in
common with many gomphothere genera (such
as Platybelodon, Archaeobelodon, Konobelodon,
and Amebelodon), they are popularly known as
"shovel tuskers."
Vocabulary
 Mammals=animals including humans, that drink milk from
their mother’s breasts when they are young /хөхтөн
амьтад/
 Plague=an attack of a disease that spreads easily and kills a
large number of people /товруу өвчин/
 Converged=came together /нэгтгэсэн/
 Extinctions=the state of being extinct, or no longer
existing /устгагдсан/
 Prey=an animal hunted for food by another animal
/идэш, олз/
 Accelerator mass spectrometry=the measurement of
energy waves by using a scientific instrument
 Profound=far reaching; having a strong influence, or
effect /гүнзгий/
 Curator=a person who is in charge of a museum library,
or zoo /сан хөмрөгч/
 Mortality=the number of deaths in a particular period of
time /нас баралт/
 Mechanism=a process or means to do or create something
/механизм/
 Lethality=ability to kill some living thing
 To give someone/something a wider berth=slang, to keep
enough space or distance from someone/something to
avoid an unwanted result
 Hypothesis - Таамаглал  Species - Зүйл

 Evidence – Нотлох баримт  Obtain - Олох

 Interval - Интервал  Conclusive - Дүгнэлт

 Periodically – Үе үе  Precise - Нарийвчилсан

 Modify - Өөрчлөх  Potential - Боломжит

 Migrate - Шилжих  Evolve - Эволюц

 Factor - Фактор  Structure - Бүтэц

 Dramatically – Үр дүнтэй  Furthermore – Цаашлаад

 Pillar – Багана  Tusk – Туузан

 Nasal incision – Хамрын зүсэлт  Steppe – Тал хээр

 Habitat – Амьдрах орчин  Spear - Жад

The End