At the end of the Pleistocene a wave of extinction swept over the icy plains and glacial outlets of the world. Some of the coolest megafauna that ever lived disappeared, from Eurasian mammoths to Australian diprotodons. The two primary theories for why it happened were over hunting by our direct ancestors and climate change. A new study finds both played a role:

In the case of the woolly rhinoceros, the new study found that the species never overlapped with humans in Europe, so climate change is the main reason for its extinction. “Still, we expect humans might have played a role in other regions of the world where they did overlap with woolly rhinos,” Shapiro said. She said the evidence is much clearer that humans did influence, and not always negatively, the population sizes of the five other species — the woolly mammoth, wild horse, reindeer, bison, and musk ox.

And speaking of interesting mammals, on a distantly related topic, check out this saber-toothed ferret-thing from the Cretaceous below, click on the image for more info.