In August, at the global wildlife trade treaty meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, one of the most surprising topics under discussion was the woolly mammoth.

The woolly mammoth once lived in North America, Europe, and northern Asia. It also went extinct more than 4 000 years ago.

The discussion revolved around adding the extinct animal to the list of endangered animals.

If that sounds like a weird proposal, it is, but it has a solid grounding in logic.

According to National Geographic, the move to include the woolly mammoth is because mammoth ivory is not easily distinguished from elephant ivory. The move to make the extinct animal endangered is part of efforts to regulate the ivory trade worldwide.

This is the first time that an extinct animal was under consideration for protection. The proposal to protect it was later withdrawn, but the global wildlife conference did agree to study mammoth ivory to determine its impact on the ivory trade.

How we think about the mammoth has changed considerably over the millennia. A few thousand years ago, it was food.

We know this because Mexican anthropologists say that they’ve found two human-built pits dug roughly 15 000 years ago to trap mammoths.

Stuff explains:

Researchers from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said the pits were found during excavations on land that was to be used as a garbage dump.

The pits filled with bones from at least 14 mammoths were found in the neighbourhood of Tultepec, just north of Mexico City. Some of the animals were apparently butchered.

The pits were about 1.7 metres deep and 25m in diameter. The institute said hunters may have chased mammoths into the traps. Remains of two other species that disappeared in the Americas – a horse and a camel – were also found.

Mammoths died out due to a combination of climate change and human contact. They are believed to have been hunted to death.

Scientists have also floated the theory that they were suffering from a disorder that was causing their genomes to fall apart.

The discovery of the trap gives us some insight into how we hunted and what we hunted.

We’ve come a long way since then (*taps app to order food*).

[sources:nationalgeographic&stuff]