The woolly mammoth is strongly associated with the Ice Age, but they survived until surprisingly recent times in the far north. Recently, the genomes of multiple mammoths from the last surviving population on Wrangel Island were sequenced. The scientists concluded the population was founded by 8 or fewer individuals and only 1 mitochondrial lineage was among them. They also estimated that the population grew to a few hundred before finally going extinct. This, it turns out, is a wonderful natural laboratory for biblical events. Consider that there were only 8 people on the Ark. How much genetic diversity would we expect to lose? Is that population too small to prevent so much inbreeding that humans would have gone into mutational meltdown? Etc. Etc.
- Dehasque M et al., Temporal dynamics of woolly mammoth genome extension prior to extinction, Cell 187(14):3531–3540.e13, 2024.
- Carter R, Biblical bottlenecks are not bad, biblicalgenetics.com, 27 May 2020.
- Carter R, Evolutionary bottlenecks are disastrous, biblicalgenetics.com, 2 Jun 2020.
- Carter R, Did we evolve from 10,000 people in Africa? biblicalgenetics.com, 19 Jul 2022.
- Carter R, Evolutionists predict super bottleneck (it would have killed us), biblicalgenetics.com, 9 Nov 2023.
- Carter R and Powell M, The genetic effects of the population bottleneck associated with the Genesis Flood, Journal of Creation 30(2):102–111, 2018.
- Carter R, Effective population sizes and loss of diversity during the Flood bottleneck, Journal of Creation 32(2):124–127, 2018.
- Carter R, Mutations and why you shouldn’t marry your cousin, creation.com, 12 Aug 2017.
- Carter R, How carbon dating works, creation.com, 12 Apr 2022.
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