Eurasia's giants decline
Cave bears, cave lions, woolly rhinoceros and mammoth contract and vanish as the steppe collapses.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 28 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 3 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
The cave bear disappears around 24,000 years ago, near the glacial maximum; the woolly rhinoceros and cave lion follow as the climate warms. Ancient DNA shows most of these species had already lost most of their genetic diversity and contracted into small isolated populations well before the end. The mammoth steppe itself breaks up as warming and rising moisture convert productive grassland into tundra and bog — the habitat goes before the animals do.