Woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), is a species of mammoth. They were large elephants which lived during the ice ages. The animal is known from bones and frozen carcasses from northern North America and northern Eurasia. The best preserved carcasses were found in Siberia. They are perhaps the most well known species of mammoth. Woolly mammoths are now extinct, so we can't see them anymore.

Woolly mammoths Temporal range: Pleistocene – Holocene
Woolly mammoth
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	Elephantidae
Genus:	†Mammuthus
Binomial name
Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799)

This mammoth species was first recorded in deposits of a former glaciation in Eurasia, perhaps 150,000 years ago.

The woolly mammoth coexisted with early humans, who hunted them. Their bones and tusks were used as tools, and dwellings. Mammoths were also hunted for food. The species disappeared from most of its range at the end of the Pleistocene (10,000 years ago), with a dwarfed race still living on Wrangel Island until about 1700 BC.

Cave paintings of the woolly mammoth have been found in caves in France and Spain.

Woolly Mammoth Media

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  Copy of an interpretation of the "Adams mammoth" carcass from around 1800, with Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's handwriting

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  1930s illustration of the lectotype molars; the left one is now lost.

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  Georges Cuvier's 1796 comparison between the mandible of a woolly mammoth (bottom left and top right) and an Indian elephant (top left and bottom right)

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  Mastodon Mammut americanum created in Adobe Photoshop.

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  Gomphotherium angustidens.

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  Stegodon ganesa, stegodont from Late Pliocene of Siwalik, India

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  Elephas africanus - 1700-1880 - Print - Iconographia Zoologica - (white background)

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  Life restoration of E. antiquus based on a skeletal depiction and the anatomy of E. maximus.

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  Indian elephant white background

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  Mammuthus trogontherii122DB