Early humans likely prompted the demise of woolly mammoths and other ancient species: Study

Early humans may have played a significant role in the demise of one of the most iconic ancient species -- the woolly mammoth -- and others like it, according to new research.

The arrival of early, primitive humans on Earth during the Pleistocene period, roughly 1.8 million years ago, caused a five-fold increase in extinction rates of proboscidean species, a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals that include only one living family -- modern elephants -- and several extinct species, including the woolly mammoth, according to a paper published Wednesday in Science.

Once homo sapiens, or modern humans, arrived on the planet about 129,000 years ago, the extinction rates of proboscidean species increased drastically -- by 17-fold, the researchers say they found while modeling fossil records with artificial intelligence.

Since the emergence of early humans and modern humans, about 27 proboscidean species have gone extinct, Torsten Hauffe, an ecologist at the University of Fribourg and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and co-author of the study, told ABC News.

The model considered human interactions, including the arrival of early humans, with the findings pointing to human activity "very strongly" affecting proboscidean extinctions, according to the study.

Hunting of proboscidean species was likely one of the main drivers of population declines and eventually extinction, Juan Cantalapiedra, an evolutionary paleobiologist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Madrid and co-author of the paper, told ABC News.

Records dating back 400,000 years ago shows evidence that Neanderthals scarfed on meat and extracted bones from proboscideans, Hauffe said.

They hunted other groups of mammals, such as carnivores, Daniele Silvestro, a biologist at the University of Fribourg and co-author of the study, told ABC News.

"And these are species that usually would not have predators, because they are the predators," he said.

The research also pointed to higher temperatures associated with the arrival of early humans, Hauffe said. The declines also coincide with warming phase following a "strong" Ice Age, but those temperature changes were relatively minor compared to the other factors, he added.

The findings of the paper indicate a long-lasting detrimental anthropogenic, or human-caused, effect on biodiversity, the researchers said.

Hunting and major disruptions to ecosystems have the potential to impact species declines in modern times, Cantalapiedra said. It occurred in 2019, when the bush fires in Australia wiped out billons of animals and decimated koala populations.

Human-caused climate change and development leading to loss of habitat are among the biggest culprits in causing the decline of certain species, the researchers said.

"Biodiversity today is experiencing a magnitude of change or loss that has not been seen really in the recent past," Silvestro said. When timber is cut down, is affects the fauna, fungi and species ranging from insects to amphibians, he added.

Dietary adaptation and flexibility was likely also a driver of speciation, especially near the end of the Neogene period about 3 million years ago, as was geographic distribution and dental morphologies, the authors said.

While fossil records hold clues on how speciation and extinction have influenced ecosystem turnover throughout millennia, the impacts proved difficult to model before the emergence of AI, the researchers sad.

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The researchers used pre-existing information on 2,118 fossils belonging to 175 proboscidean species that lived from 35 million years ago to 10,000 years ago to feed into the model, according to the paper.

Before AI existed, previous modeling attempts only incorporated single predictors, such as one environmental change or the acquisition of a single trait, which do not reflect the multi-faceted nature of evolution, the authors said.