Gary also sent in this link to the discovery that mammoths and horses may have carried on living in North America much later than the end of the Pleistocene. See for example www.thegwpf.com/climate-extinction-theory-faces-extinction/ … one of the most popular reason for the extinction of the woolly mammoths and other large herbivores, and the so called megafauna such as giant cave bears and giant ground sloths, has perhaps been overplayed by the climate lobby, and their scientist supporters. It is now a theory favoured rather than the overkill paradigm that had been popular for many a long day. These appear to be the only two theories mainstream are prepared to sanction. No mention of the Younger Dryas boundary event or catastrophism in any shape or form. The same story has appeared on https://wattsupwiththat.com … and for the same reason, they are sceptical of all things climate alarmist. The claim that global warming killed off the megafauna is bound up with the idea modern so called global warming will cause something similar, an extinction of many animal species. They ignore the fact that sea birds, raptors, bats, and various other bird species are being wiped out by wind farm turbine blades, or that butterflies and various insects suffer the same fate if turbines are located on their migrational flight paths.
A team of paleontologists now claim the DNA of 2100 plants and 180 animals, including Ice Age horses and mammoths, have been found in samples of soil dated thousands of years later than the end of the Pleistocene. This is particularly interesting in respect of the horses as the origin of Native American horses is something of a diddly squat, as the old saying goes. All the horses used by Plains Indians are supposed to descend from horses left behind by Spanish explorers and soldiers. Within a couple of hundred years the Plains tribes had access to numerous horses which they used to fight a guerilla war against the European newcomers. Tribes such as the Nez Perce were famed for their breeding skills, yet the tribe was located way north of anywhere the Spanish had penetrated. It makes sense that horses survived from the Ice Age, although they may never have been used in warfare prior to the arrival of the Spanish. Once the idea of cavalry caught on one can see how their use escalated.
Of course the woolly mammoth is what captured the attention of the news media, as they are an iconic animal of the Ice Age. Again, this is not entirely surprising as recent studies have discovered the early Holocene period was much warmer than previously allowed, on a par with the Mid Holocene Warm Period. Even in Siberia. However, at the moment we are not being told, by the media, how many thousands of years after the onset of the Holocene these animals survived.