Six thousand years ago, a small band of woolly mammoths became marooned on a remote Arctic island and, against every expectation, built a stable society that endured for millennia. A 2024 genomic study now confirms that when these last mammoths vanished four thousand years ago, their genes were not to blame — the population was, by measurable standards, healthy. What ended them remains unknown, a reminder that even resilient life can be undone in an instant by forces that leave no trace in the record we know how to read.