What is Mammoth ?

The remains were of a 16-year-old male woolly mammoth that died about 30,000 years ago. The discovery helped scientists conclude that the large “lumps” on a mammoth’s back were extra stores of fat to help it survive winters. The mammoth was nicknamed “Zhenya.”

As massive as they were (about 13 feet long and five to seven tons), Woolly Mammoths figured on the lunch menu of early Homo sapiens, who coveted these beasts for their warm pelts (which could presumably keep an entire family comfy on bitterly cold nights) as well as their tasty, fatty meat.

Although, most of the woolly mammoth population died out by 10,000 years ago, a small population of 500-1000 woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island until 1650 BC.

That’s only about 4,000 years ago! For context, Egyptian pharoahs were midway through their empire and it was about 1000 years after the Giza pyramids were built. The reason for the demise of these woolly mammoths are unknown.

From about 30,000 to 12,000 years ago, the Woolly Mammoth was one of the most popular subjects of neolithic artists, who daubed images of this shaggy beast on the walls of numerous western European caves.

Plunk any large, warm-blooded mammal down in an arctic habitat, and you can bet that it will evolve shaggy fur millions of years down the road.

What we call the Woolly Mammoth was actually a particular species of genus Mammuthus, Mammuthus primigenius.

It's true, you know. The name 'mammoth' is a little misleading, as it seems to suggest that these creatures were obscenely huge. When in fact, mammoths are understood to be approximately the same size as present-day Asian elephants.

Despite its imposing size, the Woolly Mammoth was actually outclassed in bulk by a few other Mammuthus species.

With the steady melting of permafrost in the northern polar region, several mammoth fossils were found. Scientists are using these fossils to understand these creatures, their habitat, and the reasons contributing to their extinction

The information thus revealed has shed some light not only on the way the mammoths lived, but also what our world was like back in those times.

Even the thickest, shaggiest coat of fur won't provide sufficient protection during a full-on Arctic gale. That's why Woolly Mammoths also had four inches of solid fat underneath their skin, an added layer of insulation that helped to keep them warm and toasty in the most severe climatic conditions.

By the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, pretty much all the world's Mammoths had succumbed to climate change and predation by humans.

Even today, 10,000 years after the last Ice Age, the northern reaches of Canada, Alaska, and Siberia are very, very cold—which helps to explain the amazing number of Woolly Mammoth individuals that have been discovered mummified, near-intact, in solid blocks of ice.

Besides their long, shaggy coats, Woolly Mammoths are famous for their extra-long tusks, which measured up to 15 feet on the biggest males. These huge appendages were most likely a sexually selected characteristic: males with longer, curvier, more impressive tusks had the opportunity to pair up with more females during mating season.

Because Woolly Mammoths went extinct relatively recently and were closely related to modern elephants, scientists may be able to harvest the DNA of Mammuthus primigenius and incubate a fetus in a living pachyderm (a process known as "de-extinction").

As massive as they were (about 13 feet long and five to seven tons), Woolly Mammoths figured on the lunch menu of early Homo sapiens, who coveted these beasts for their warm pelts (which could presumably keep an entire family comfy on bitterly cold nights) as well as their tasty, fatty meat.

In fact, there's an argument to be made that the patience, planning, and cooperation required to bring down a single Woolly Mammoth was a key factor in the development of human civilization.

From about 30,000 to 12,000 years ago, the Woolly Mammoth was one of the most popular subjects of neolithic artists, who daubed images of this shaggy beast on the walls of numerous western European caves. These primitive paintings may have been intended as totems (that is, early humans may have believed that capturing Woolly Mammoths in ink facilitated capturing them in real life) or as objects of worship; or perhaps a particularly talented caveman was just bored on a cold, rainy day!

Plunk any large, warm-blooded mammal down in an arctic habitat, and you can bet that it will evolve shaggy fur millions of years down the road. It's not as well-known as the Woolly Mammoth, but the Woolly Rhino, aka Coelodonta, also roamed the plains of Pleistocene Eurasia, and it was also hunted for its food and pelt by early humans (who presumably found this one-ton beast a bit easier to handle).

This single-horned beast may even have helped inspire the unicorn legend! The North American Mastodon, with which the Woolly Mammoth shared some of its territory, had a much shorter fur pelt.

What we call the Woolly Mammoth was actually a particular species of genus Mammuthus, Mammuthus primigenius. A dozen other Mammoth species were extant in North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene epoch, including Mammuthus trogontherii (the Steppe Mammoth), Mammuthus imperator (the Imperial Mammoth) and Mammuthus columbi (the Columbian Mammoth). However, none of these Mammoths attained as wide a distribution as their woolly relative.

Despite its imposing size, the Woolly Mammoth was actually outclassed in bulk by a few other Mammuthus species. Imperial Mammoth (Mammuthus imperator) males weighed over 10 tons, and some individuals of the Songhua River Mammoth of northern China (Mammuthus sungari) may have tipped the scales at 15 tons. Compared to these behemoths, the five- to seven-ton Woolly Mammoth was an insignificant runt!

Even the thickest, shaggiest coat of fur won't provide sufficient protection during a full-on Arctic gale. That's why Woolly Mammoths also had four inches of solid fat underneath their skin, an added layer of insulation that helped to keep them warm and toasty in the most severe climatic conditions. Based on what we can learn from well-preserved individuals, Woolly Mammoth fur ranged in color from blonde to dark brown, much like human hair.

By the end of the last Ice Age, about 10,000 years ago, pretty much all the world's Mammoths had succumbed to climate change and predation by humans. The exception was a small population of Woolly Mammoths that lived on Wrangel Island, off the coast of Siberia, until 1700 B.C.