Climate, not humans, led to demise of the woolly rhino

CLIMATE change rather than overhunting may have caused the woolly rhinoceros to become extinct around 14,000 years ago, scientists have said.

The giant herbivorous creatures are thought to have roamed northern Asia and Europe during the ice ages around 350,000 years ago and genetic analysis suggests they were well adapted to living in colder climates.

While the arrival of humans has been proposed as a potential cause of extinction, evidence on this is limited.

So a team of researchers analysed ancient DNA from 14 woolly rhinos (Coelodonta antiquitatis) gathered from tissue, bone, and hair samples.

The findings, published in the journal Current Biology, showed the megaherbivores’ populations remained “stable and diverse” for more than 13,000 years following the arrival of humans.

Love Dalén, the senior study author, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, a joint venture between Stockholm

University and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, said: “It was initially thought that humans appeared in north-eastern Siberia 14,000 or 15,000 years ago, around when the woolly rhinoceros went extinct. But recently there have been several discoveries of much older human occupation sites, the most famous of which is around 30,000 years old. So, the decline towards extinction of the woolly rhinoceros doesn’t coincide so much with the first appearance of humans in the region.

“If anything, we actually see something looking a bit like an increase in population size during this period.”

Nicolas Dussex, the co-first author, a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Palaeogenetics, said: “We found that, after an increase in population size at the start of a cold period some 29,000 years ago, the woolly rhino population size remained constant and that, at this time, inbreeding was low.”

The researchers also found genetic mutations that helped the woolly rhinos adapt to colder weather. The scientists believe this species, which was suited to the frigid north-east Siberian climate, may have declined due to warming towards the end of the last Ice Age.