MAMMOTH APPETITE: Scientists strive to understand how large animals in northerly climes subsisted on limited vegetation. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/FLYING PUFFIN
The paper
D. Zhu et al., “The large mean body size of mammalian herbivores explains the productivity paradox during the Last Glacial Maximum,” Nat Ecol Evol, 2:640-49, 2018.
A PALEONTOLOGY PARADOX
During the Last Glacial Maximum, global temperatures and atmospheric carbon levels were less than ideal for vegetation to grow in the northern hemisphere, but the fossil record shows that herbivorous woolly mammoths were plentiful in unglaciated regions—a discrepancy termed the “productivity paradox.”
MODEL MAMMOTHSAn international team of researchers approached the problem by modeling plant cover based on climate, the water cycle, and other variables, and incorporating the presence of large grazing animals. The scientists tested the model on a variety of modern ecosystems involving grazers, and found that its predictions of grass cover generally matched observations. ...
