At the elevation of their achiever woolly mammoths dominated most of Eurasia and about one-half of North America . The most accurate map of this range ever produced has been free , as part of a study of the conditions in which mammoth could live , and what barriers they were able to span to get there .
The woolly mammoth , Mammuthus primigeniusthrived under Ice Age conditions , with a grasp far more heroic than their innovative pachyderm congener . " The recent inquiry findings show that during the last Ice Age , mammoths were the most widely distributed large mammals , thus rightfully serving as a flagship mintage of the glacial era , " said Ralf - Dietrich Kahlke , of the Senckenberg Research Station , in astatement .
In total , mammoth occupy more than 33 million satisfying kilometers ( 13 million square naut mi ) , an area larger than Africa , and Kahlke says this is a lower limit . In Eurasia they swan from Portugal to as far east as Korea and Japan , and in North America they stretched right across easterly Canada and the American Midwest , as well as take in considerable soil that has now been claimed by rising oceans .
Nevertheless there was some dominion mammoths could not conquer . Africa , Central America and South and South East Asia were predictably too lovesome for the shaggy coated wildcat , but there were other obstruction as well . InQuarternary InternationalKahlke reported that “ High muckle chain with no passible vale were another very efficacious barrier to migration . From the dispersion of happen this is particularly apparent in the Pyrenees area , the Crimea pile chain of mountains and the Greater Caucasus . ”
Undeterred by coke or wind , mammoth managed to migrate high up on the slopes of these ranges , but were not build for the mounting required to reach or cross the peaks , often leaving territory south of a range mammoth - gratuitous . It seems mammoths only reached Spain and Portugal by transmigrate through district that is now underwater , since they could n’t cross the Pyrenees .
Similarly , glacier and deserts immobilize their paths at various point in time , although these obstacles often retreated or shifted in the face of alter climatic conditions , open up up new territory for the gargantuan brute .
The mammoth ’s gravid range . Arrows represent obstacle , they could not thwart : ice sheets ( A ) , high peck ( group B ) comeupance and semi - comeupance ( C ) and open water that never froze over ( D).Credit : Kahlke / Quarternary International .
The map is ground on the location and eld of gigantic remains and an identification of areas whose climatic and geographic shape at the time were similar . " Even sites under H2O , off the North American Atlantic shoring and the North Sea , were taken into account , ” Kahlke said in thestatement , " Such elaborated knowledge regarding the distribution area is not even uncommitted for many species of animal alive today . "
As the world warm , mammoths pull back into the more limited areas that stay suitable for them , let in Wrangel Island , Russia , where mammothssurvived until 4,300 years ago .
The only other large fauna that had a like range during the era was the ice - age bison , Bison priscus . However , its orbit varied in response to environmental cistron that mammoth were more tolerable of .
Kahlke point that the grounds of where mammoths roamed can differentiate us a lot about the causes of their experimental extinction , which , like that of other deoxyephedrine - age mammals , remainshighlycontested .
