The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) was widespread in almost all of Europe during the late Pleistocene. However, its distribution changed because of population fluctuations and range expansions and reductions. During Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage 2 (MIS 2), these processes were highly dynamic. Our analyses of 318 radiocarbon dates from 162 localities, obtained directly from mammoth material, confirmed important changes in mammoth range between ~28.6 and ~14.1 ka. The Greenland stadial 3 interval (27.5–23.3 ka) was the time of maximum expansion of the mammoth in Europe during MIS 2. The continuous range was soon fragmented and reduced, resulting in the disappearance of Mammuthus during the last glacial maximum from ~21.4 to ~19.2 ka in all parts of the North European Plain. It is not clear whether mammoths survived in the East European Plain. The mammoth returned to Europe soon after ~19.0 ka, and for the next 3–4 millennia played an important role in the lifeways of Epigravettian societies in eastern Europe. Mammoths became extinct in most of Europe by ~14.0 ka, except for core areas such as the far northeast of Europe, where they survived until the beginning of the Holocene. No significant correlation was found between the distribution of the mammoth in Europe and human activity.

Remains identified as those of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) dated at 12,200 ± 55 14C yr B.P. were recovered while excavating in a complex sequence of glaciomarine sediments in Scarborough, Maine, USA. The mammoth was found in the top meter of a fossiliferous unit of mud and sand laminites. These sediments were deposited during a marine regressive phase following the transgression that accompanied northward retreat of the margin of the Laurentide ice sheet. A Portlandia arctica valve from the underlying transgressive unit provides a minimum age of 14,820 ± 105 14C yr B.P. for local deglaciation. The mammoth, an adult female, died in midwinter with no evidence of human involvement. Tusk growth rates and oxygen-isotope variation over the last few years of life record low seasonality. The mammoth was transported to the site as a partial carcass by the late-glacial proto-Saco River. It sank in a near-shore setting, was subjected to additional disarticulation and scattering of elements, and was finally buried in sediments reworked by the shallowing sea.

Cave, a lava tube cave on St. Paul Island in the Pribilofs, has recently produced a mid-Holocene vertebrate faunal assemblage including woolly mammoth, polar bear, caribou, and Arctic fox. Several dates on the mammoth remains converge on 5700 14C yr BP. These dates, ~ 2300 yr younger than mammoth dates previously published from the Pribilof Islands, make these the youngest remains of proboscideans, and of non-extinct Quaternary megafauna, recovered from North America. Persistence of mammoths on the Pribilofs is most parsimoniously explained by the isolation of the Pribilofs and the lack of human presence in pre-Russian contact times, but an additional factor may have been the local existence of high-quality forage in the form of grasses enriched by nutrients derived from local Holocene tephras. This interpretation is reinforced by stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values obtained from the mammoth remains. The endpoint of mammoth survival in the Pribilofs is unknown, but maybe coterminous with the arrival of polar bears whose remains in the cave date to the Neoglacial cold period of ~ 4500 to 3500 14C yr BP. The polar bear record corroborates a widespread cooling of the Bering Sea region at that time.