DID the ancient Clovis people of North America drive mammoths to extinction by slaughtering them? Not according to a study of mammoth tooth enamel.
Kathryn Hoppe of Stanford University in California measured isotopes of carbon and other elements in the enamel of fossil mammoth teeth from three American Clovis sites 10,000 to 13,000 years old in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas. At each site, the teeth contained a wide variety of isotope ratios consistent with long-term changes in local vegetation and diet. She found similar wide variations at a site where mammoths were not hunted and their remains built up…
