{"id":360552,"date":"2026-07-31T18:15:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T18:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/som2nypost.com\/aerospace\/ice-age-humans-mostly-killed-female-woolly-mammoths-suggests-ancient-dna\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T18:15:41","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T18:15:41","slug":"ice-age-humans-mostly-killed-female-woolly-mammoths-suggests-ancient-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/som2nypost.com\/?p=360552","title":{"rendered":"Ice Age Humans Mostly Killed Female Woolly Mammoths, Suggests Ancient DNA"},"content":{"rendered":"


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After analyzing more than 500 mammoth bones, researchers found that ancient humans disproportionately hunted female mammoths for reasons still unknown<\/h2>\n
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Sara Hashemi<\/a><\/p>\n

| Daily Correspondent<\/span><\/p>\n

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A collection of mammoth bones in a pit in Austria
\n Marc H\u00e4ndel \/ Austrian Academy of Sciences<\/span>
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Before their extinction, woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius<\/em>) were an important resource for Ice Age hunters. The animals provided meat and fat for food, thick hides for clothing and shelter covering, and ivory for art and ornaments. Now, a new study has found that our ancestors mostly targeted female mammoths.<\/p>\n

Since the 1800s, archaeologists have uncovered massive accumulations of mammoth bones that have left them puzzled<\/a>. Some argue that human hunters created the piles, while others believe the bones amassed after the animals died of natural causes.<\/p>\n

To learn more about these sites, an international team of researchers analyzed ancient DNA from 521 woolly mammoths, including 100 individuals recovered from 11 human-associated bone accumulation sites from 20,000 to 30,000 years ago and 421 mammoths from natural deposition settings across Europe and North America. They found that males made up 66 percent of mammoths recovered from natural settings, whereas females accounted for 70 percent of individuals from human-associated bone accumulation sites.<\/p>\n

The findings, published in the journal Current Biology <\/em><\/a>yesterday, provide new information on the hunting habits of ancient humans. \u201cBy scaling up sample sizes, ancient DNA can go beyond evolutionary history to teach us about animal behavior and human culture tens of thousands of years ago,\u201d says study co-author Love Dal\u00e9n<\/a>, an evolutionary geneticist at Stockholm University, in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The researchers still aren\u2019t sure why this disparity exists between hunted males and females. \u201cWhile it is tempting to assume that hunters would have targeted females because they were smaller than adult males, the reality may have been more complex,\u201d says study co-author Hannah Moots<\/a>, an archaeologist at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, Sweden, in the statement.<\/p>\n

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Did you know? DNA was preserved for 52,000 years in freeze-dried woolly mammoth remains<\/p>\n