New DNA study challenges inbreeding theory of woolly mammoth extinction

For thousands of years, the last woolly mammoths clung to existence on a remote Arctic island, and science believed it understood why they ultimately failed — that inbreeding had quietly written their end. A 2024 genetic study now challenges that settled story, finding that the Wrangel Island population remained biologically viable despite severe isolation, suggesting instead that some sudden, still-unnamed catastrophe delivered the final blow. The discovery asks us to reconsider not only how a species dies, but how long the shadow of a population crisis can stretch across time — a question th