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Mammoth

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Dinosaurs

                      iMammoth

                             Conservation status

   Prehistoric
             Scientific classification

   Kingdom: Animalia
   Phylum:  Chordata
   Class:   Mammalia
   Order:   Proboscidea
   Family:  Elephantidae
   Genus:   Mammuthus
            Brookes, 1828

                                   Species

   Mammuthus africanavus   African mammoth
   Mammuthus columbi   Columbian mammoth
   Mammuthus exilis   Pygmy mammoth
   Mammuthus jeffersonii   Jeffersonian mammoth
   Mammuthus trogontheri   Steppe mammoth
   Mammuthus meridionalis
   Mammuthus primigenius   Woolly mammoth
   Mammuthus lamarmorae   Sardinian Dwarf Mammoth

   A mammoth is any of a number of an extinct genus of elephant, often
   with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long
   hair. They lived during the Pleistocene epoch from 1.6 million years
   ago to around 3,500 years ago. The word mammoth comes from the Russian
   мамонт mamont, probably in turn from the Khanty. Mammoths are one of
   the most well known, extinct mammals.

Evolutionary history

   Mammoth remains have been found in Europe, Africa, Asia, and North
   America. They are believed to have originally evolved in North Africa
   about 4.8 million years ago, where bones of Mammuthus africanavus have
   been found in Chad, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia. Mammuthus
   subplanifrons, found in South Africa and Kenya, is also believed to be
   one of the oldest species (about 4 million years ago).

   Despite their African ancestry, they are in fact more closely related
   to the modern Asian Elephant than either of the two African elephants.
   The common ancestor of both mammoths and Asian elephants split from the
   line of African elephants about 6 - 7.3 million years ago. The Asian
   elephants and mammoths diverged about half a million years later (5.5 -
   6.3 million years ago).

   In due course the African mammoth migrated north to Europe and gave
   rise to a new species, the southern mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis).
   This eventually spread across Europe and Asia and crossed the
   now-submerged Bering Land Bridge into North America.

   Around 700,000 years ago, the warm climate of the time deteriorated
   markedly and the savannah plains of Europe, Asia and North America gave
   way to colder and less fertile steppes. The southern mammoth
   consequently declined, being replaced across most of its territory by
   the cold-adapted steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii). This in turn
   gave rise to the woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius) around 300,000
   years ago. Woolly mammoths were better able to cope with the extreme
   cold of the Ice Ages.

   The woollies were a spectacularly successful species; they ranged from
   Spain to North America and are thought to have existed in huge numbers.
   The Russian researcher Sergei Zimov estimates that during the last Ice
   Age, parts of Siberia may have had an average population density of
   sixty animals per hundred square kilometres - equivalent to African
   elephants today.

Extinction

   Most mammoths died out at the end of the last Ice Age. A definitive
   explanation for their mass extinction is yet to be agreed upon.
   However, the dwarf mammoths of Wrangel Island became extinct only
   around 1700 to 1500 BC.

   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.

   New data derived from studies done on living elephants and reported by
   the American Institute of Biological Sciences (BioScience, April 2006,
   Vol. 56 No. 4, pp. 292-298) suggests that though human hunting may not
   have been the primary cause toward 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.

   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 due
   to the fact that the island was very remote, and uninhabited in the
   early post-Pleistocene period. The actual island was not discovered by
   modern civilization until the 1820s by American whalers. A similar
   dwarfing occurred with Mammoths on the outer Channel Islands of
   California, but at an earlier period. Those animals were very likely
   killed by early Paleo-Native Americans.

   On August 14, 2006, scientists announced that they are considering
   possible means of bringing a hybrid species of the long-extinct woolly
   mammoth back from extinction. They say that sperm frozen in the testes
   of male mammoths may be viable and could be injected into Asian
   elephant eggs, which would produce a mammoth-elephant hybrid .

Mammoths and cryptozoology

   There have been occasional claims that the mammoth is not actually
   extinct, and that small isolated herds might survive in the vast and
   sparsely inhabited tundra of the northern hemisphere. In the late
   nineteenth century, there were, according to Bengt Sjögren (1962),
   persistent rumours about surviving mammoths hiding in Alaska. In
   October 1899, a story about a man named Henry Tukeman detailed him
   having killed a mammoth in Alaska and that he subsequently donated the
   specimen to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.. But the
   museum denied the existence of any mammoth corpse and the story turned
   out to be a hoax. Sjögren (1962) believes the myth got started when the
   American biologist C.H. Townsend traveled in Alaska, saw Eskimos
   trading mammoth tusks, asked if there still were living mammoths in
   Alaska and provided them with a drawing of the animal.

   In the 19th century, several reports of "large shaggy beasts" were
   passed on to the Russian authorities by Siberian tribesman, but no
   scientific proof ever surfaced. A French charge d´affaires working in
   Vladivostok, M. Gallon, claimed in 1946 that in 1920 he met a Russian
   fur-trapper that claimed to have seen living giant, furry "elephants"
   deep into the taiga. Gallon added that the fur-trapper didn't even know
   about mammoths before, and that he talked about the mammoths as a
   forest-animal at a time when they were seen as living on the tundra and
   snow (Sjögren, 1962).

   There was an alleged Soviet Air Force sighting during World War II, but
   this was not verified by a second sighting.

Size

   It is a common misconception that mammoths were much larger than modern
   elephants, an error that has led to "mammoth" being used as an
   adjective meaning "very big". Certainly, the largest known species, the
   Imperial Mammoth of California, reached heights of at least 4 meters
   (13 feet) at the shoulder. Mammoths would probably weigh in the region
   of 6-8 tons. . However, most species of mammoth were only about as
   large as a modern Asian Elephant, and fossils of a species of dwarf
   mammoth have been found on Wrangel Island off the east coast of Siberia
   as well as the Californian channel islands (M. exilis) and some
   Mediterranean islands.

Adaptations

   Mammoths had a number of adaptations to the cold, most famously the
   thick layer of shaggy hair, up to 50 cm (20 in) long, for which the
   woolly mammoth is named. They also had far smaller ears than modern
   elephants; the largest mammoth ear found so far was only a foot (30 cm)
   long, compared to six feet (1.8 m) for an African elephant. They had a
   flap of hairy skin which covered the anus, keeping out the cold.

   Their teeth were also adapted to their diet of coarse tundra grasses,
   with more plates and a higher crown than their southern relatives.
   Their skin was no thicker than that of present-day elephants, but
   unlike elephants they had numerous sebaceous glands in their skin which
   secreted greasy fat into their hair, improving its insulating
   qualities. They had a layer of fat up to 8 cm (3 in) thick under the
   skin which, like the blubber of whales, helped to keep them warm.

   Mammoths had extremely long tusks - up to 16 feet (5 m) long - which
   were markedly curved, to a much greater extent than those of elephants.
   It is not clear whether the tusks were a specific adaptation to their
   environment, but it has been suggested that mammoths may have used
   their tusks as shovels to clear snow from the ground and reach the
   vegetation buried below.

Preserved remains, genetic evidence

   One-of-a-kind stuffed mammoth in The Museum of Zoology, St. Petersburg,
   found from River Berezovka
   Enlarge
   One-of-a-kind stuffed mammoth in The Museum of Zoology, St. Petersburg,
   found from River Berezovka
   Preserved baby mammoth remains in Lucerne, Switzerland
   Enlarge
   Preserved baby mammoth remains in Lucerne, Switzerland
   Section through the ivory tooth of a mammoth
   Enlarge
   Section through the ivory tooth of a mammoth

   Preserved frozen remains of woolly mammoths have been found in the
   northern parts of Siberia. This is a rare occurrence, essentially
   requiring the animal to have been buried rapidly in liquid or
   semi-solids such as silt, mud and icy water which then froze.

   This may have occurred in a number of ways. Mammoths may have been
   trapped in bogs or quicksands and either died of starvation or
   exposure, or drowning if they sank under the surface. Though judging by
   the evidence of undigested food in the stomach and seed pods still in
   the mouth of many of the specimens, neither starvation nor exposure
   seem likely. The maturity of this ingested vegetation places the time
   period in autumn rather than in spring when flowers would be expected.

   Found here: E. W. Pfizenmayer was one of the scientists who actually
   recovered and studied the Berezovka mammoth in the early 1900s. From
   his book, Siberian Man and Mammoth, he says about the mammoth:

   "Its death must have occurred very quickly after its fall, for we found
   half-chewed food still in its mouth, between the back teeth and on its
   tongue, which was in good preservation. The food consisted of leaves
   and grasses, some of the latter carrying seeds. We could tell from
   these that the mammoth must have come to its miserable end in the
   autumn."

   They may have fallen through frozen ice into small ponds or potholes,
   entombing them. Many are certainly known to have been killed in rivers,
   perhaps through being swept away by river floods. In one location, by
   the Berelekh River in Yakutia in Siberia, more than 9,000 bones from at
   least 156 individual mammoths have been found in a single spot,
   apparently having been swept there by the current.

   To date, thirty-nine preserved bodies have been found, but only four of
   them are complete. In most cases the flesh shows signs of decay before
   its freezing and later desiccation. Stories abound about frozen mammoth
   corpses that were still edible once defrosted, but the original sources
   (e.g. William R. Farrand's article in Science 133 [March 17,
   1961]:729-735) indicate that the corpses were in fact terribly decayed,
   and the stench so unbearable that only the dogs accompanying the
   finders showed any interest in the flesh.

   In addition to frozen corpses, large amounts of mammoth ivory have been
   found in Siberia. Mammoth tusks have been articles of trade for at
   least 2,000 years. They have been and are still a highly prized
   commodity. Güyük, the 13th century Khan of the Mongols, is reputed to
   have sat on a throne made from mammoth ivory, and even today it is in
   great demand as a replacement for the now-banned export of elephant
   ivory.

   Since there is a known case in which an Indian elephant and an African
   elephant have produced a live (though sickly) offspring, it has been
   theorised that if mammoths were still alive today, they would be able
   to interbreed with Indian elephants.

   This has led to the idea that perhaps a mammoth-like beast could be
   recreated by taking genetic material from a frozen mammoth and
   combining it with that from a modern Indian elephant. Scientists hope
   to retrieve the preserved reproductive organs of a frozen mammoth and
   revive its sperm cells. However, not enough genetic material has been
   found in frozen mammoths for this to be attempted. The complete
   mitochondrial genome sequence of Mammuthus primagenius has been
   determined, however (J. Krause et al, Nature 439,724-727, 9 Feb 2006).
   The analysis demonstrates that the divergence of mammoth, African
   elephant, and Asian elephant occurred over a short time, and confirmed
   that the mammoth was more closely related to the Asian than to the
   African elephant.
   A full size reconstruction of a mammoth at Ipswich Museum, Ipswich,
   Suffolk Enlarge
   A full size reconstruction of a mammoth at Ipswich Museum, Ipswich,
   Suffolk

   As an important landmark in this direction, in December 2005, a team of
   German, UK & American researchers were able to assemble a complete
   mitochondrial DNA of the mammoth, which allowed them to trace the close
   evolutionary relationship between mammoths and the Asian elephant.
   African elephants branched away from the woolly mammoth around 6
   million years ago, a moment in time intriguingly close to that of the
   similar split between chimps and humans.

   On July 6, 2006 it was reported that scientists, using the latest
   genetic techniques, determined that a gene called Mc1r, extracted from
   a 43,000-year-old woolly mammoth bone from Siberia, caused Mammoths to
   have dark brown coats or blond hair (Rompler H et al. Science. 2006 Jul
   7;313(5783):62).

Origins of the name

   The name "mammoth" comes via Russian from the Tatar language. It may
   have its origins in the Tatar word mamma, "earth", alluding to the
   long-held belief that mammoths lived underground and made burrows. The
   17th century traveller Eberhard Ysbrant Ides recorded that the Evenk,
   Yakut and Ostyak peoples of Siberia believed that the mammoths
   "continually, or at least by reason of the very hard frosts, mostly
   live under ground, where they go backwards and forwards." Exposure to
   the air was enough to kill them, explaining why they were never seen
   alive.

Aboriginal legends

   A mammoth possibly appears in an ancient legend of the Kaska tribe in
   British Columbia, The Bladder Headed Boy. The story tells how the boy
   in the title killed a mammoth, and was rewarded by being made the first
   chief of his people. The mammoth is described fairly accurately as a
   "huge shaggy beast that roamed the land long ago", but is also said to
   steal meat and eat people, suggesting that the creature in the story
   could be a conflation of more than one kind of animal.

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