Climate change lead to extinction of woolly rhino, finds study

A new study has revealed that poachers/human hunters were not responsible for the extinction of woolly rhinos but the primary reason was found to be climate change. As per the study, experts from Stockholm University sequenced ancient DNA extracted from 14 woolly rhinos and found that their population remained stable until only a few thousand years before it disappeared from Siberia due to rising temperatures. Scientists believed that the extinction of these woolly mammoths is caused by the spread of humans around the globe and their hunting patterns. 

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Rising temperatures led to extinction

The study found that overhunting led to the demise of some species but the main reason of them getting extinct is the rising global warming across the region. The study is published in the journal Current Biology.  Love Dalen, a geneticist at Sweden's Centre for Palaeogenetics led the study. 

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To learn about the size and stability of the woolly rhinoceros population in Siberia, the researchers studied the DNA from tissue, bone, and hair samples of 14 individuals. "We sequenced a complete nuclear genome to look back in time and estimate population sizes, and we also sequenced fourteen mitochondrial genomes to estimate the female effective population sizes," says co-first author Edana Lord, a PhD student at the Centre for Palaeogenetics.

This stability lasted until well after humans began living in Siberia, contrasting the declines that would be expected if the woolly rhinos went extinct due to hunting. "That's the interesting thing," says Lord. "We actually don't see a decrease in population size after 29,000 years ago. The data we looked at only goes up to 18,500 years ago, which is approximately 4,500 years before their extinction, so it implies that they declined sometime in that gap."

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