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Age Profiles in Elephant and Mammoth Bone Assemblages

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Gary Haynes
Gary Haynes*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, U.S. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 20560 USA
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Abstract

Age profiles of modern African elephant (Loxodonta africana) populations are significantly affected by drought conditions that cause local die-offs. Subadult animals die in proportions that may be nearly twice what is recorded in live populations. Such biasing of death sample age profiles might also have occurred during late Pleistocene die-offs of Mammuthus. This comparative study of modern and fossil proboscidean age structures supports a tentative interpretation that late Pleistocene extinction of Mammuthus (at least in the southwestern United States) resulted from severe drought conditions, at which Clovis hunters were witnesses, but not necessarily frequent participants.

Type
Research Article
Information
Quaternary Research , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , November 1985 , pp. 333 - 345
Copyright
University of Washington

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