You might say it was a case of kicking the woolly mammoth while it was down.

Arguments have raged over whether climate change or hunting by humans is what drove the beasts to extinction and the answer, it seems, is a bit of both. Climate change decimated the last remaining populations and hunters delivered the final coup de grâce.

The woolly mammoth once roamed freely in the cold, dry steppes of Siberia and North America, but disappeared some 3000 years ago.