Plant pollen has been found in the remains of four mammoths, with scientists also discovering the first evidence of the animal having allergies.
Scientists believe that the ancestors of elephants may have suffered from allergies to plant pollen that damaged their sense of smell and ability to find a mate and reproduce.
This hay fever, researchers suggest, could have led to a prolonged decline in birth rates, culminating in the extinction of the species around 4000 years ago.
The last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago and led to a period of rapid climate change which saw trees and plants flourish.
Scientists from private companies in Israel partnered with academics in Italy and at the Russian Academy of Sciences to analyse tissue samples from four mammoth corpses now in a museum that were dug up from the permafrost in northeastern Siberia.
Allergies have been found as a possible cause for the extinction of the species.
Climate change theory
The conventional school of thought is that climate change led to the extinction of the woolly mammoths 4000 years ago, after millennia of increased isolation and population decline following the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago.
A 2021 study by Cambridge University scientists concluded that rapid climate change was “the final nail in the coffin” for the species which could grow up to 3.6m tall and weigh 7.2 tonne .
The warmer climate saw trees and wetland plants replace the preferred grassland habitat of the woolly mammoth, the decade-long project found. The loss of vegetation has been blamed as a key reason for mammoth extinction.
But humans have also been blamed for the demise of the mammoth, with studies suggesting over-hunting by early tribes fatally lowered herd numbers.
Early cavemen are known to have painted mammoths on the side of caves, as well as using their giant bones to make shelters and tusks to make weapons.
First theory pointing to disease
But the latest study, published in the new Elsevier journal Earth History and Biodiversity “proposes a new evolutionary mechanism for the extinction of mammoths”.
“A new hypothesis and mechanism for the extinction of mammoths is proposed based on a decrease in the likelihood of mating due to allergies and decreased sensitivity to odours,” the scientists write.
Zilberstein added: “Our theory of the extinction of mammoths is the first one that pointed to markers of diseases – allergies to plants.
“It showed that the extinction was a slow process of decreasing the mammoth population due to the destruction of chemical communication [recognition by smell] between animals during the breeding season.”
