mammoth, name for several large prehistoric relatives (genus Mammuthus) of modern elephants which ranged over Eurasia and North America in the Pleistocene epoch. The shoulder height of the Siberian, or woolly, mammoth, which roamed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, was about 9 ft (2.7 m), and that of the imperial mammoth of the North American Great Plains was up to 131/2 ft (4.1 m). Mammoths were covered by a long, shaggy, black outer coat and a dense, woolly undercoat. They had complex, many-ridged molar teeth; long, slender upward-curved tusks; and a long trunk. Ivory hunters have collected their tusks for centuries in Siberia, where tens of thousands have been discovered; it is from these and from the drawings left by the Cro-Magnon people in the caves of S France that the mammoth's appearance is known. Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) people hunted mammoths, as is evidenced by remains of the animals found together with tools, and may have contributed to their extinction. The last population, on Wrangel Island, Russia, in the Arctic, survived until c.5,000 years ago. Mammoths are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Proboscidea, family Elephantidae.

Any of several species (genus Mammuthus) of extinct elephants whose fossils have been found in Pleistocene deposits (beginning 1.8 million years ago) on every continent except Australia and South America. The woolly, Northern, or Siberian mammoth (M. primigenius) is the best-known species because the Siberian permafrost preserved numerous carcasses intact. Most species were about the size of modern elephants; some were much smaller. The North American imperial mammoth (M. imperator) grew to a shoulder height of 14 ft (4 m). Many species had a short, woolly undercoat and a long, coarse outer coat. Mammoths had a high, domelike skull and small ears. Their long, downward-pointing tusks sometimes curved over each other. Cave paintings show them traveling in herds. Mammoths survived until about 10,000 years ago; hunting by humans may have been a cause of their extinction. Seealso mastodon.

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National park, southwest-central Kentucky, U.S. The park, authorized in 1926 and established in 1941, occupies a surface area of 82 sq mi (212 sq km) that covers a system of limestone caverns. In 1972 a passage was discovered linking the Mammoth Cave and the Flint Ridge Cave System; the explored underground passages have a combined length of some 329 mi (530 km). The caves are inhabited by various animals that have undergone evolutionary adaptation to the dark, including cave crickets, blindfish, and blind crayfish. Mummified Indian bodies, possibly of pre-Columbian origin, have been found in the caves.

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A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of the elephant family and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch from 4.8 million years ago to around 4,500 years ago. The word mammoth comes from the Russian мамонт mamont, probably in turn from the Vogul (Mansi) language.

Extinction

The woolly mammoth was the last species of the genus. Most populations of the woolly mammoth in North America and Eurasia died out at the end of the last Ice Age. Until recently, it was generally assumed that the last woolly mammoths vanished from Europe and Southern Siberia about 10,000 BC, but new findings show that some were still present here about 8,000 BC. Only slightly later, the woolly mammoths also disappeared from continental Northern Siberia. Wooly mammoths as well as Columbian mammoths disappeared from the North American continent at the end of the ice age. A small population survived on St. Paul Island, Alaska, up until 6000 BC, and the small mammoths of Wrangel Island became extinct only around 2000 BC.

A definitive explanation for their mass extinction is yet to be agreed upon. About 12,000 years ago, warmer, wetter weather was beginning to take hold. Rising sea levels swamped the coastal regions. Forests replaced open woodlands and grasslands across the continent. The Ice Age was ebbing. As their habitats disappeared, so did the bison and the mammoth.

Whether the general mammoth population died out for climatic reasons or due to overhunting by humans is controversial. Another theory suggests that mammoths may have fallen victim to an infectious disease. A combination of climate change and hunting by humans is the most likely explanation for their extinction.

New data derived from studies done on living elephants (see Levy 2006) suggests that though human hunting may not have been the primary cause for the mammoth's final extinction, human hunting was likely a strong contributing factor. Homo erectus is known to have consumed mammoth meat as early as 1.8 million years ago (Levy 2006: 295).

However, the American Institute of Biological Sciences also notes that bones of dead elephants, left on the ground and subsequently trampled by other elephants, tend to bear marks resembling butchery marks, which have previously been misinterpreted as such by archaeologists.

The survival of the dwarf mammoths on Russia's Wrangel Island was because the island was very remote and uninhabited in the early Holocene period. The actual island was not discovered by modern civilization until the 1820s by American whalers. A similar dwarfing occurred with the Pygmy Mammoth on the outer Channel Islands of California, but at an earlier period. Those animals were very likely killed by early Paleo-Native Americans, and habitat loss caused by a rising sea level that split the Santa Rosae into the outer Channel Islands.

Thomas Jefferson, well-versed in the natural sciences, suggested to Lewis and Clark that they might find mammoth fossils during their explorations of the American West.

Size

Like their modern relative the elephant, mammoths were quite large; in English the noun "mammoth" has become an adjective meaning "huge" or "massive". The largest known species, the Imperial Mammoth of California, reached heights of at least 5 metres (16 feet) at the shoulder. Mammoths would probably normally weigh in the region of 6 to 8 tonnes, but exceptionally large males may have exceeded 12 tonnes. A long mammoth tusk was discovered north of Lincoln, Illinois in 2005. However, most species of mammoth were only about as large as a modern Asian Elephant. Fossils of species of dwarf mammoth have been found on the Californian Channel Islands (Mammuthus exilis) and the Mediterranean island of Sardinia (Mammuthus lamarmorae). There was also a race of dwarf woolly mammoths on Wrangel Island, north of Siberia, within the Arctic Circle.

Based on studies of their close relatives the modern elephants, mammoths probably had a gestation period of 22 months, resulting in a single calf being born. Their social structure was probably the same as that of African and Asian elephants, with females living in herds headed by a matriarch, whilst bulls lived solitary lives or formed loose groups after sexual maturity.

Well preserved specimens

In May 2007, the carcass of a six-month-old female woolly mammoth calf was discovered in a layer of permafrost near the Yuribei River in Russia, where it had been buried for 37,000 years. Alexei Tikhonov, the Russian Academy of Science's Zoological Institute's deputy director, has dismissed the prospect of cloning the animal, as the whole cells required for cloning would have burst under the freezing conditions. DNA is expected to be well enough preserved to be useful, however, for research on mammoth phylogeny and perhaps physiology.

See also

• Elephant
• Mastodon
• Pleistocene Park
• La Brea Tar Pits - cluster of tar pits located in California, USA

References

• (2006): A nuclear DNA phylogeny of the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40 (2) 620–627. (HTML abstract). Supplemental data available to subscribers.
• (2006): Clashing with Titans. BioScience 56(4): 292-298. DOI:10.1641/0006-3568(2006)56[292:CWT]2.0.CO;2 PDF fulltext
• (1994): Mammoths. MacMillan, London. ISBN 0-02-572985-3
• (2005): Twilight of the mammoths: Ice Age extinctions and the rewilding of America. University of California Press, Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-23141-4
• (1885): The Lenape Stone or The Indian and the Mammoth. DjVu fulltext PDF fulltext
• (2001): Mammoth: The resurrection of an Ice Age giant. Fourth Estate, London. ISBN 1-84115-518-7

Footnotes

External links

• "Mammoth find. New evidence links Siberian, North American mammals", Little Mammoth from North America found in Siberia, in Canada National Post, September 05, 2008.
• " The Mammoth Story" by Grant Keddie - an article on the Royal British Columbia Museum website
• Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, South Dakota
• " The Great Mammoth Hoax"
• BBC: Mammoth skeleton found in Siberia
• "Back from the dead": A feature on efforts to clone mammoths back from extinction, Cosmos Magazine, 6 December 2006.
• Humans not responsible for mammoth extinction
• The Waco Mammoth Site
• Wenas Creek Mammoth Site The Wenas Creek Mammoth Project is a Central Washington University (CWU) scientific investigation of mammoth bones found on private land in the Wenas Creek Valley near Selah, Washington
• Western Center for Archaeology and Paleontology Hemet, California