Columbian mammoth

The Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi), or Imperial mammoth, was a species of mammoth which lived late in the Pleistocene period. Its remains have been found in Canada, the United States, Nicaragua and Mexico.

Columbian mammoth Temporal range: mid Pleistocene to early Holocene 1.5–0.011 mya
Columbian mammoth
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	Elephantidae
Genus:	†Mammuthus
Binomial name
Mammuthus columbi (Blumenbach, 1799)

The Columbian mammoth went extinct at the end of the ice ages about 11,000 years ago. It shared the fate of many other large mammals, whose extinction is attributed to hunting and climate change.

DNA studies show that the Columbian mammoth was a hybrid between woolly mammoths and another lineage descended from steppe mammoths. This hybridization happened more than 420,000 years ago.

These mammoths did not live in the Arctic regions of Canada, where the woolly mammoth lived. The ranges of the two species may have overlapped, and genetic evidence suggests that they interbred. Several sites have the skeletons of more than one Columbian mammoths. Maybe they died in incidents such as a drought, or perhaps these places were natural traps where individuals tended to die.

Columbian Mammoth Media

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  1863 lithograph of the partial holotype molar from Georgia

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  Henry F. Osborn's 1942 diagram of evolutionarily "progressive" mammoth skulls of species he grouped in the genus Parelephas; the North American species are now considered junior synonyms of M. columbi

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  Smilodon and dire wolves fighting over a Columbian mammoth carcass in the La Brea Tar Pits, by Robert Bruce Horsfall, 1911

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  Environment of what is now White Sands National Park, with Columbian mammoth herd in the background