Who Killed Woolly?

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Many find the progress being made on such a number of fronts encouraging. It means that scientists may soon be able to rule out some scenarios and bolster others. From growth rings on fossil tusks, for example, University of Michigan paleobiologist Dan Fisher can already tentatively say that climate change alone does not seem to be an adequate explanation for the demise of the mammoths. In the tusks examined to date, he notes, there is no discernible pattern of growth retardation or delayed maturity, both of which would be expected if climate change disrupted the plant communities that sustained these large herbivores.

On one thing, at least, all the scientists agree, and that is the importance of solving this long-standing mystery. Globally, Flannery observes, the disappearance of the megafauna amounts to "the biggest extinction event since the age of the dinosaurs," and in some respects, it is even more troubling. The dinosaurs, after all, were wiped out after a comet or asteroid smashed into Earth. The extinction of the megafauna, directly or indirectly, may have been our doing.