Landscape, climate and mammoth food resources in the East European Plain during the Late Paleolithic epoch

Climate warming and consequent degradation of permafrost resulted in instability of the land surface, thermokarst, and expansion of wetlands. The snow thickness increased due to more abundant snowfall in winter and made grazing difficult for mammoths. The first interstadial warming affected the less hardy early mammoths, while the progressive warming towards the Holocene appeared fatal to the typical mammoth.