Paleogenomic sex inference of mammoth remains sheds light on the anthropogenic nature of bone accumulations.
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Moots HM, Larsdotter J, Oteo-García G, Dehasque M, Tubbesing F, Thomas Thorpe JA, Xenikoudakis G, di Paolo F, Selvatici S, Chacón-Duque JC, Sharif MB, Moreland K, Pečnerová P, Kanellidou F, Baumann C, Collins A, Druckenmiller P, Paijmans JLA, Barlow A, Fewlass H, Göhlich UB, Heintzman PD, Kwiatkowski A, Pavlyukov G, den Ouden N, van den Hoek Ostende L, Barnes I, Tikhonov A, Protopopov A, Westbury MV, Shapiro B, Lister AM, Lõugas L, Termes L, Richards MP, Nikolskiy P, Plotnikov V, Angerbjörn A, Danilov G, Vartanyan S, Pasda K, Roblíčková M, Lázničková-Galetová M, Drucker DG, Novák M, Herčíková S, Pryor AJE, van der Valk T, Germonpré M, Hofreiter M, Wooller MJ, Händel M, Wilczyñski J, Dalén L, Díez-Del-Molino D
Curr. Biol. 36 (16) 4233-4242.e4 [2026-08-17; online 2026-07-30]
Whether large accumulations of woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) bones reflect natural mortality or deliberate human resource exploitation has long been debated, with major implications for understanding Late Pleistocene human-megafaunal interactions.1,2,3,4,5 Here, we use ancient DNA to investigate site-formation hypotheses by comparing genetic sex ratios from mammoth remains recovered in putative anthropogenic bone accumulations and from geographically dispersed, non-anthropogenic contexts. We studied genome-wide data from 521 woolly mammoths-including 100 mammoths from bone accumulation sites and 421 mammoths from natural depositional settings across Eurasia and North America-of which 448 are newly generated. Genetic sex determination reveals a striking contrast between contexts: mammoths from dispersed sites show a male bias (∼66.5%), which is consistent with the heightened vulnerability of solitary males to hazards such as natural traps, where bones are more likely to be preserved, whereas mammoths from anthropogenic bone accumulations are predominantly female (∼70%). This female bias is pervasive across multiple sites, indicating an anthropogenic origin for these accumulations as a result of Upper Paleolithic hunters preferentially exploiting female mammoths, possibly derived from herd contexts. Together, these results provide population-scale genetic evidence that highlights the central role of mammoths in the subsistence and material economies of some Paleolithic communities.
NGI Stockholm (Genomics Production) [Service]
National Genomics Infrastructure [Service]
PubMed 42532037
DOI 10.1016/j.cub.2026.07.023
Crossref 10.1016/j.cub.2026.07.023
pii: S0960-9822(26)00888-2