Study reveals how woolly mammoths adapted to survive ice age
Research has revealed how woolly mammoths and other species adapted to survive the ice age.
A team of palaeontologists and palaeogeneticists studied ancient fossil and DNA evidence to understand the changes animals and plants went through in the Northern Hemisphere.
They found that cold-adapted animals began to evolve 2.6 million years ago, when permanent ice at the poles became more common.
The study showed that many current cold-adapted species, as well as extinct ones like mammoths, evolved around 700,000 years ago, when cold periods doubled in length.
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Research shows Arctic foxes and polar bears arrived later than once thought (Image: Canva) The findings, which offer a greater understanding of how species evolved in the past, were published in the journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
John Stewart, professor of paleoecology at Bournemouth University, led the study.
He said: "The cold-adapted species are among the most vulnerable animals and plants to ongoing climate change.
"Therefore, an understanding of how species evolved in the past is essential to help us understand the risks faced by endangered species today."
As part of their research, the team compared evidence of evolution in plants and beetles with that for mammals.
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Cold-adapted animals began evolving 2.6 million years ago, researchers find (Image: Canva) They suggested that ideas that some organisms had evolved earlier in the polar regions need to be tested.
This means that the way the modern Arctic ecologies assembled needs to be resolved, as it is not clear when and how the animals and plants who live there came together.
The study found evidence for early occurrences of true lemmings and reindeer in the Arctic, where they may have evolved as climates cooled in the early Pleistocene period, between one and two million years ago.
The polar bear and Arctic fox, on the other hand, may have joined them more recently within the last 700,000 years, colonising from the south.
Some of the ice age cold species like the woolly rhino are different and may have evolved in the steppe grasslands to the south, with the earliest occurrences in the Tibetan Plateau.
Professor Stewart said: "This is the first concerted effort to compare the evolution of cold-adapted animals and plants since modern methods of palaeogenetics appeared."
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