why did the woolly mammoth go extinct

The woolly mammoth went extinct primarily due to a combination of human hunting, climate change, and environmental shifts. Early humans hunted woolly mammoths, contributing significantly to population declines. At the same time, the end of the last ice age brought about dramatic warming, causing the mammoth's cold grassland habitat—known as the mammoth steppe—to shrink and transform into forests and wetlands that were unsuitable and less nutritious for the mammoths. This loss of habitat, coupled with the challenges of small isolated populations suffering from inbreeding on isolated islands, led to their eventual extinction. Some research also suggests that a sudden event, such as disease or environmental catastrophe, may have delivered the final blow to the last populations on islands like Wrangel Island. Thus, the extinction was likely due to a complex interplay of human, climatic, and ecological factors rather than a single cause.