Overview
- The study, published July 30–31, 2026 in Current Biology, analysed ancient DNA from 521 woolly mammoth specimens and included 448 individuals sequenced for the first time.
- Genetic sexing found that bone piles tied to Upper Palaeolithic human activity were about 70 percent female, while dispersed natural deposits were about 66 percent male.
- Physical archaeology such as embedded projectile points, cut marks, and fractures corroborates that people sometimes hunted or butchered mammoths at the large accumulation sites.
- Authors offer testable explanations for the female bias — hunters may have targeted smaller females, repeatedly encountered predictable female‑led herds, or scavenged concentrated carcasses — but they say the exact hunting or taphonomic mechanisms remain unresolved.
- The team also reported a rare X0/XX mosaicism in a Wrangel Island mammoth and says follow‑up work should probe how selective harvesting affected mammoth demography and the species' eventual decline.