Mini-Mammoths

EVERY SCHOOLCHILD KNOWS THAT WOOLLY MAMmoths died out at the end of the Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago. Well, maybe not. A team of Russian scientists reported in Nature that the beasts may have survived until 2000 B.C. on an island off the coast of Siberia. The researchers uncovered 29 fossilized teeth that range from 4,000 to 7,000 years of age. In a survival technique that has since been copied by human institutional giants, the prehistoric pachyderms adapted to their confined island circumstances by downsizing their bulk. Extrapolating from the small tooth size, scientists calculate that the mini- mammoths stood 6 ft. tall at the shoulder, compared with 10 ft. for their full-size counterparts. Still unclear: whether climatic changes or human hunters triggered their final, belated fall.