Woolly mammoth

Remains of woolly mammoths were long known by native Siberians and Native Americans, who had various ways of interpreting them. Remains later reached other parts of Asia and Europe, where they were also interpreted in various ways prior to modern science. The first woolly mammoth remains studied by scientists were examined by the British physician Hans Sloane in 1728 and consisted of fossilised teeth and tusks from Siberia. Sloane was the first to recognise that the remains belonged to elephants. Sloane turned to another biblical explanation for the presence of elephants in the Arctic, asserting that they had been buried during the Great Flood, and that Siberia had previously been tropical before a drastic climate change. Others interpreted Sloane's conclusion slightly differently, arguing the flood had carried elephants from the tropics to the Arctic. Sloane's paper was based on travellers' descriptions and a few scattered bones collected in Siberia and Britain. He discussed the question of whether or not the remains were from elephants, but drew no conclusions.

In 1738, the German zoologist Johann Philipp Breyne argued that mammoth fossils represented some kind of elephant. He could not explain why a tropical animal would be found in such a cold area as Siberia, and suggested that they might have been transported there by the Great Flood. In 1796, French biologist Georges Cuvier was the first to identify the woolly mammoth remains not as modern elephants transported to the Arctic, but as an entirely new species. He argued this species had gone extinct and no longer existed, a concept that was not widely accepted at the time. Following Cuvier's identification, the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach gave the woolly mammoth its scientific name, Elephas primigenius, in 1799, placing it in the same genus as the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). This name is Latin for 'the first-born elephant'. Cuvier coined the name Elephas mammonteus a few months later, but the former name was subsequently used. In 1828, the British naturalist Joshua Brookes used the name Mammuthus borealis for woolly mammoth fossils in his collection that he put up for sale, thereby coining a new genus name.

Where and how the word mammoth originated is unclear. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it comes from an old Vogul word mēmoŋt 'earth-horn'. …

The average shoulder height for males of the species has been estimated at 2.8–3.15 m (9 ft 2 in – 10 ft 4 in) with a weight of 4.5–6 t (9,900–13,200 lb), with females being smaller like living elephants, with a shoulder height of 2.3–2.6 m (7 ft 7 in – 8 ft 6 in) and a weight of 2.8–4 t (6,200–8,800 lb). This size is comparable to the largest living elephant species, the African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana), but is considerably smaller than the earlier Mammuthus meridionalis and Mammuthus trogontherii and the contemporary Mammuthus columbi. A newborn calf would have weighed about 90 kg (200 lb).

The woolly mammoth exhibited size variation throughout its range, with individuals from Western Europe being considerably larger (with adult males estimated to be on average 2.99–3.31 m (9 ft 10 in – 10 ft 10 in) tall and 5.2–6.9 t (11,000–15,000 lb) in weight) than those found in Siberia (with adult males of this population being estimated on average 2.66–2.94 m (8 ft 9 in – 9 ft 8 in) tall and 3.9–5.2 t (8,600–11,500 lb) in weight). One of the largest recorded woolly mammoths is the Siegsdorf specimen from Germany, estimated to be 50 years, with an estimated shoulder height of 3.49 m (11 ft 5 in) and an estimated body mass of 8.2 t (18,000 lb).

Few frozen specimens have preserved genitals, so the sex is usually determined through examination of the skeleton. The best indication of sex is the size of the pelvic girdle, since the opening that functions as the birth canal is always wider in females than in males. Though the mammoths on Wrangel Island were smaller than those of the mainland, their size varied, and they were not small enough to be considered "island dwarfs". An adult male from the Holocene Wrangel Island population was estimated to have a height of 2.8 m (9 ft 2 in) and a weight of 4.5 t (9,900 lb). The last woolly mammoth populations are claimed to have decreased in size and increased their sexual dimorphism, but this was dismissed in a 2012 study.

The appearance of the woolly mammoth is probably the best known of any prehistoric animal due to the many frozen specimens with preserved soft tissue and depictions by contemporary humans in their art. Woolly mammoths had several adaptations to the cold, most noticeably the layer of fur covering all parts of their bodies. …

Adult woolly mammoths could effectively defend themselves from predators with their tusks, trunks, and size; however, juveniles and weakened adults were vulnerable to pack hunters such as wolves, cave hyenas, and large felines. The tusks may have been used in intraspecies fighting, such as fights over territory or mates. Display of the large tusks of males could have been used to attract females and intimidate rivals. Because of their curvature, the tusks were unsuitable for stabbing but may have been used for hitting, as indicated by injuries to some fossil shoulder blades.

The very long hairs on the tail probably compensated for the shortness of the tail, enabling its use as a flyswatter, similar to the tail on modern elephants. As in modern elephants, the sensitive and muscular trunk worked as a limb-like organ with many functions. It was used for manipulating objects and in social interactions. The well-preserved foot of the adult male "Yukagir mammoth" shows that the soles of the feet contained many cracks that would have helped in gripping surfaces during locomotion. Like modern elephants, woolly mammoths walked on their toes and had large, fleshy pads behind the toes.

Like modern elephants, woolly mammoths were likely very social and lived in matriarchal (female-led) family groups. This is supported by fossil assemblages and cave paintings showing groups, implying that most of their other social behaviours were likely similar to those of modern elephants. How many mammoths lived at one location at a time is unknown, as fossil deposits are often accumulations of individuals who died over long periods of time. The numbers likely varied by season and lifecycle events. Modern elephants can form large herds, sometimes consisting of multiple family groups, which can include thousands of animals migrating together. Mammoths may have formed large herds more often since animals that live in open areas are more likely to do this than those in forested areas. Trackways made by a woolly mammoth herd 11,300–11,000 years ago have been found in the St. Mary Reservoir in Canada, showing that in this case, almost equal numbers of adults, subadults, and juveniles were found. The adults had a stride of 2 m (6.6 ft), and the juveniles ran to keep up.

Woolly mammoth dental enamel from Poland has demonstrated that woolly mammoths were seasonally migratory. …

The habitat of the woolly mammoth is known as "mammoth steppe" or "tundra steppe". This environment stretched across northern Asia, many parts of Europe, and the northern part of North America during the last ice age. It was similar to the grassy steppes of modern Russia, but the flora was more diverse, abundant, and grew faster. Grasses, sedges, shrubs, and herbaceous plants were present, and scattered trees were mainly found in southern regions. This habitat was not dominated by ice and snow, as is popularly believed, since these regions are thought to have been high-pressure areas at the time. The habitat of the woolly mammoth supported other grazing herbivores such as the woolly rhinoceros, wild horses, and bison. The Altai-Sayan assemblages are the modern biomes most similar to the "mammoth steppe". A 2014 study concluded that forbs (a group of herbaceous plants) were more important in the steppe-tundra than previously acknowledged, and that it was a primary food source for the ice-age megafauna.

The southernmost woolly mammoth specimen known is from the Shandong province of China and is 33,000 years old. The southernmost European remains are from the Depression of Granada in Spain and are of roughly the same age. DNA studies have helped determine the phylogeography of the woolly mammoth. A 2008 DNA study showed two distinct groups of woolly mammoths: one that became extinct 45,000 years ago and another one that became extinct 12,000 years ago. The two groups are speculated to be divergent enough to be characterised as subspecies. The group that became extinct earlier stayed in the middle of the high Arctic, while the group with the later extinction had a much wider range. Recent stable isotope studies of Siberian and New World mammoths have shown there were differences in climatic conditions on either side of the Bering land bridge (Beringia), with Siberia being more uniformly cold and dry throughout the Late Pleistocene. During the Younger Dryas age, woolly mammoths briefly expanded into north-east Europe, whereafter the mainland populations became extinct.

A 2008 genetic study showed that some of the woolly mammoths that entered North America through the Bering land bridge from Asia migrated back about 300,000 years ago and had replaced the previous Asian population by about 40,000 years ago, not long before the entire species became extinct. …

Modern humans coexisted with woolly mammoths during the Upper Palaeolithic period when humans entered Europe from Africa between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago. Before this, Neanderthals had coexisted with mammoths during the Middle Palaeolithic (as evidenced by sites such as La Cotte de St Brelade in the Channel Islands, dating to 200,000 years ago), and already used mammoth bones for tool-making and building materials. Woolly mammoths were very important to ice age humans, and human survival may have depended on the mammoth in some areas. Evidence for such coexistence was not recognised until the 19th century. William Buckland published his discovery of the Red Lady of Paviland skeleton in 1823, which was found in a cave alongside woolly mammoth bones, but he mistakenly denied that these were contemporaries. In 1864, Édouard Lartet found an engraving of a woolly mammoth on a piece of mammoth ivory in the Abri de la Madeleine cave in Dordogne, France. The engraving was the first widely accepted evidence for the coexistence of humans with prehistoric extinct animals and is the first contemporary depiction of such a creature known to modern science.

The woolly mammoth is the third-most depicted animal in ice age art, after horses and bison, and these images were produced between 35,000 and 11,500 years ago. Today, more than 500 depictions of woolly mammoths have been discovered in media ranging from cave paintings and engravings on the walls of 46 caves in Russia, France, and Spain to engravings and sculptures (termed "portable art") made from ivory, antler, stone, and bone. Cave paintings of woolly mammoths exist in several styles and sizes. The French Rouffignac Cave has the most depictions, 159, and some of the drawings are more than 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in length. Other notable caves with mammoth depictions are the Chauvet Cave, Les Combarelles Cave, and Font-de-Gaume. An elephantid depiction in the Cave of El Castillo may instead show the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus).

"Portable art" can be more accurately dated than cave art since it is found in the same deposits as tools and other ice age artifacts. The largest collection of portable mammoth art, consisting of 62 depictions on 47 plaques, was found in the 1960s at an excavated open-air camp near Gönnersdorf in Germany. …