This piece was originally published in The Guardian and appears here as part of our Climate Desk collaboration. Genetic diversity could shrink as animals venture into new territories because of global heating, leaving them vulnerable to extinction, scientists have warned after tracking the impact of climate change on the American mastodon. Huge, hairy, and with a pair of fearsome tusks, mastodons resembled stocky, hirsute elephants. The earliest fossils of American mastodons date to about 3.5 to 4 million years ago, with the creatures commonly found in wooded and swampy areas…
