What killed the woolly rhino?

FROM THEPDDNA moa in New Zealand to the dodo in Mauritius, the arrival of humans has often spelled extinction for tasty but previously isolated animals. Many scientists had assumed that the woolly rhinoceros, a shaggy beast that sported an enormous horn, suffered the same fate. The animal was common in northern Europe and northern Asia 30,000 years ago, when the first humans arrived. Shortly after, it disappeared.But Love Dalén, a professor at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm, and Edana Lord, one of Dr Dalén’s h students, are not so sure. In a paper published in , they use data from ancient to argue that, this time at least, humans might be innocent.