Woolly Mammoth Bachelors Skew the Fossil Record

(Credit: Shutterstock) When paleontologists pull woolly mammoth fossils from mud pits, sinkholes, mudflows and other ancient booby traps, odds are it was a male that fell victim to the hazard. This macabre gender bias, researchers say in a new study, serves as a window into the behavioral patterns of these hirsute beasts that died out roughly 10,000 years ago. It turns out, as one might expect, woolly mammoth society may not have been so different from the pachyderm families that roam earth today. An international team of researchers led by Patricia Pecnerova of the Swedish Museum of Natural History used genomic data to determine the sex of 98 random woolly mammoth specimens. In doing so, they hoped to learn more about the social organization and behavior of mammoths in the last 60,000 years of their existence. Some of the most well preserved fossils come from animals that died in natural ...