Originally Posted by
Kaleredar
First off, almost all species we think of as mammoths (i.e, giant furry elephants) died 10,000+ years ago, and in the northern extremes of the world. And yes, the climate, in many of those areas, was much different. Glaciers had begun to recede; the tundra heath the mammoths subsisted on became isolated and fractured as forests became more prominent, making these smaller populations more prone to things like hunters, disease, etc. Regardless, the world that the mammoths had adapted to occupy had begun to vanish. And it has not "reappeared," nor would that be a compelling reason.
The animals you're describing that "only died out a few thousand years ago" are a select few dwarf mammoth populations that were isolated on islands.
The animals and plants that currently exist there do so in niches that have adapted for some 10,000 years to exclude the existence of animals like mammoths.