> 1. the steppe mammoth specifically (i.e. the one everyone means when they reference humans hunting mammoths to extinction) The steppe mammoth became extinct

> 1. the steppe mammoth specifically (i.e. the one everyone means when they reference humans hunting mammoths to extinction) The steppe mammoth became extinct 200,000 years ago, it likely never encountered homo sapiens. The name is also a bit of a misnomer - they were associated with the steppe but were not confined to them. When people talk about mammoths hunted to extinction by humans, they are usually referring to the woolly mammoth, which had a much wider range. They've been found from southern Spain to Kentucky. They might also be talking about the Columbian mammoth which resided in lower latitude parts of North America as far south as Costa Rica. Both the woolly and columbian mammoths are descended from the steppe mammoth, and both went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene with pygmy populations surviving on islands into the Holocene. Both survived numerous previous interglacial periods. The "mammoth steppe" is just a poetic name for a biome common at the time, indeed the most common biome on Earth during the age of the woolly mammoth, it's not actually a term for a region the woolly mammoth was endemic to. It is by definition distinct from currently existing steppe climates, but the differences are mostly academic and does not explain the extinction of the mammoths. Indeed it is believed that the decline of the steppe was likely caused by the extinction of the mammoth (and other large herbivores), as they prevented trees from becoming too large or numerous, and in their absence much of the steppe turned into forest.