Mystery of Wrangel Island: Woolly Mammoths Vanished Suddenly 4,000 Years Ago

On a remote Arctic island, the last woolly mammoths on Earth endured for millennia after their mainland kin had gone — and then, around 4,000 years ago, they vanished in what appears to have been a sudden collapse rather than a slow unraveling. A 2024 genetic study has dismantled the long-held assumption that inbreeding quietly eroded the population from within, revealing instead a lineage that remained genetically viable right up until its end. The question science thought it had answered has reopened into something more unsettling: not why these creatures were fated to disappear, but what fo