Woolly Mammoth

Quick Take

• Woolly mammoths share a gene with humans, and that shared gene still shows up in people today in a very recognizable way. See the genetic connection →
• Scientists think bringing woolly mammoths back could actually help fight climate change, though perhaps not in the way you would expect. Explore the climate benefits →
• A frozen mammoth discovered in 2013 had something inside it that stunned researchers and hints at a remarkable biological adaptation. Discover the frozen specimen →
• Mammoth ivory is still bought and sold legally today, and climate change is only making the market bigger. Learn about the ivory trade →

The woolly mammoth is one of the most fascinating prehistoric animals — probably because it became extinct only as recently as 4,000 years ago. Remains and tusks of this mammoth are found all across Eurasia and North America almost every day. Its closest living relative is the Asian elephant, whose DNA holds the key to efforts to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction. Woolly mammoths are well known for their long, curved tusks, and mammoth ivory is still a hot commodity among humans today.

Evolution and Classification

The oldest representative of the genus Mammuthus is the South African mammoth, which appeared in what is now southern and eastern Africa during the late Miocene around 6 million years ago. These large land giants carried the same spiraling, twisted tusks as their descendants, the steppe mammoth. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth around 800,000 years ago in East Asia, making the Asian elephant its only living relative.

Relatives of the steppe mammoth traveled to North America by way of the Bering Strait land bridge, beginning 1.5 million years ago. Eventually, the Columbian mammoth and several other species evolved, with some inhabiting North America as far south as Mexico. Woolly mammoths adapted to colder climates in the north, while the Columbian mammoth and other smaller groups of species adapted to warmer climates. It is believed that the species interbred.

The woolly mammoth is the latest ancestor of the first identified Mammuthus, with a habitat that eventually covered most of Eurasia and North America. Some woolly mammoths survived as recently as 3,700 to 4,000 years ago on Russia’s Wrangel Island, long after mainland Siberian populations — including those on the Taymyr Peninsula — had disappeared thousands of years before.

Species

There is a dispute as to exactly how many species of mammoth have existed. They include these ten:

• South African mammoth (Mammuthus subplanifrons): The oldest mammoth species of the genus Mammuthus appeared around 5 million years ago in the early Pliocene in South Africa and countries of East Africa, with a concentration in Ethiopia. It already possessed features characteristic of its descendants, including spirally twisting tusks and a trunk.
• African mammoth (Mammuthus africanavus): The second oldest mammoth species first appeared around 3 million years ago during the late Pliocene, and lastly around 1.65 million years ago during the early Pleistocene. Fossils have been found in Chad, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia.
• Columbian mammoth (M. columbi): This species of mammoth inhabited the Americas as far north as the Northern United States and as far south as Nicaragua and Honduras during the Pleistocene epoch. It was one of the last mammoth species, surviving until the same period as the woolly mammoth.
• Cretan dwarf mammoth (M. creticus): The smallest mammoth ever to exist, skulls of this species have been found on Mediterranean islands and have been suggested as the basis for the ancient Greek myth of the Cyclops. This mammoth lived during the late Pleistocene on the isle of Crete.
• Imperial mammoth (M. columbi imperator): Another mammoth species that existed during the Pleistocene, this one inhabited the Americas from the Northern United States south to Costa Rica.
• Jefferson’s mammoth (M. columbi jeffersoni): This mammoth inhabited the American West and Midwest during the late Pleistocene epoch.
• Pygmy mammoth (M. exilis): The pygmy or Channel Islands mammoth lived on the four northern Channel Islands of California, United States, during the late Pleistocene.
• Southern mammoth (M. meridionalis): Another of the Pleistocene era mammoths, this animal roamed Europe and Central Asia.
• Steppe mammoth (M. trogontheri): The steppe mammoth ranged over most of Eurasia during the Middle Pleistocene, approximately 750,000 to 500,000 years ago. It evolved in Siberia from the Southern mammoth.
• Woolly mammoth (M. primigenius): The woolly mammoth lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction during the Holocene epoch. This mammoth ranged across Eurasia and North America and was perhaps the last in the line of mammoth species to have lived as recently as 4,000 years ago.

Description and Size

Woolly mammoths were the same size as today’s African elephants. Males stood between nine and 11 feet high at the shoulder, and females were slightly smaller — 8.5 to 9.5 feet tall at the shoulder. Males could weigh as much as 13,200 pounds, and females weighed 8,000 pounds. A newborn woolly mammoth would have weighed 200 pounds.

Woolly mammoths were covered in fur, likely to keep them warm in the wintry environments they inhabited. Genetic tests revealed that woolly mammoths ranged in color from blonde to dark brown or black. However, scientists aren’t sure if there was an evolutionary advantage to this coloring. Preserved woolly mammoth hair is often orangish when it is found, but researchers believe that is due to ground conditions changing the pigmentation. What is most interesting is that the gene researchers used to determine the animals’ coloring is still present in animals today — including humans. This gene causes people to have red hair, and in some other animals, it causes yellow or blonde hair.

Woolly mammoths had long trunks, like elephants, and huge, curved tusks. Researchers believe they used their tusks in a similar manner to modern elephants. They could use their tusks for fighting and use their trunks for handling items and helping with foraging.

The main difference between woolly mammoths and modern elephants is their ears. They had much smaller ears, likely to minimize the chance of frostbite. Besides their tusks, they had four large molars to grind their food. Their molars would get replaced six times throughout their lifetime.

Diet — What Did Woolly Mammoths Eat?

Woolly mammoths likely lived on a diet of mainly grasses and sedges — grass-like plants with flowers. However, evidence preserved in mammoths’ stomachs shows that they also snacked on flowers, shrubs, materials found on trees, and moss. Different samples show that what the mammoths ate specifically depended on their location.

Some evidence shows that baby mammoths may have eaten excrement to promote the growth of a gut biome that would help them to digest plants as they grew and stopped drinking their mother’s milk.

Since they were so large, they needed to eat a lot. Experts believe they had to eat nearly 400 pounds of food each day and could have spent up to 20 hours a day searching for food.

When and Where Woolly Mammoths Lived

Woolly mammoths lived in a type of environment called “mammoth steppe” or “tundra steppe.” This area was found in the northern regions of what we now call Asia, Europe, and North America. There are actually two groups of woolly mammoths that experts are researching to find out if they should be two different subspecies. The first group went extinct about 45,000 years ago and stayed closer to the Arctic. The second group went extinct about 12,000 years ago, and skeletons of this type have been found as far south as the Shandong Province in China and Granada in Spain.

Woolly mammoths may have reached North America by crossing the land bridge across what is now the Bering Strait over 300,000 years ago.

Researchers consider the woolly mammoth one of the most successful mammals of its era because of its vast geographic range, estimating its habitat covered over 12,857,588 square miles (33,301,000 square kilometers).

Other mammoth species were present millions of years ago. Woolly mammoths started to diverge from other mammoth species about 800,000 years ago. They went extinct in most places around 10,000 years ago, except for isolated populations on islands that went extinct 4,000 years ago.

Predators and Threats

As such large animals, woolly mammoths may not have had many predators. However, young mammoths and weak or sick animals would have been vulnerable to wolves, cave hyenas, and large predatory cats of the era. There is some evidence that humans may have hunted woolly mammoths, but it’s not clear how prevalent that was. There were other, smaller, and easier-to-hunt animals available to humans at the time. More commonly, mammoth skeletons show evidence that humans scavenged the remains after a predator had already killed the animal or it had died of natural causes.

Threats to woolly mammoths were also environmental. They were sensitive to the long winters when it was harder to find food. This is evidenced by their tusk growth rings, which slowed in the winter. One study of mammoth remains in North America found that the most common time for them to die was in the winter or spring when food was hardest to come by.

Climate change was also likely a threat to woolly mammoths. The final downturn of the woolly mammoth population occurred toward the end of the last ice age. However, experts believe that the woolly mammoths’ decline could also have contributed to the warming of the environment. They were no longer eating birch trees, which have a sunlight-absorbing and warming effect. So, birch forests grew more readily and could have warmed the environment by 0.2 degrees Celsius. That may not sound like much, but it did make a difference.

Discoveries and Fossils

Mammoth skeletons are very plentiful. A simple search reveals numerous articles about hundreds of mammoth skeletons being found in one location or another. In 2020, nearly 200 skeletons were found at a construction site in Mexico City. Samples are plentiful; however, there are some notable ones that have helped scientists learn much about woolly mammoths.

There are two types of woolly mammoth remains that can be found: skeletons or fossils, and actual remains. Many woolly mammoth remains are found frozen. However, one mammoth was found in Poland with preserved soft tissue. It had been naturally mummified in a petroleum seep.

Early frozen mammoth remains from the 1700s were cut up and sold off to the highest bidder. In the 1800s, some were even fed to dogs! Fortunately, since then, scientists have found many well-preserved frozen specimens to study.

Some of the most informative frozen mammoths are mammoth calves. These specimens give us an idea of how mammoths grew and how they cared for their young. For example, by studying these specimens, scientists believe that calves were nursed for 2 to 3 years before transitioning to a diet of plants.

One frozen mammoth that was found in 2013 still had liquid blood in its abdomen, leading researchers to believe that its blood may have had some anti-freezing capabilities.

Extinction: When and Why Did The Woolly Mammoth Die Out?

There are a few different theories as to why the woolly mammoth died out. The one thing everyone is sure about is when they died out. Most died out about 10,000 years ago. However, a few isolated populations remained on the islands. They lived on Saint Paul Island, which is part of Alaska, until 5,600 years ago. They lived on Wrangel Island, in Russia, until about 4,000 years ago.

It is a bit easier to determine the cause of extinction for the smaller island-based populations. The mammoths on St. Paul Island went extinct because their habitat shrank due to sea-level rise, and that likely reduced the amount of fresh water available.

The Wrangel Island mammoths seem to have been killed by a catastrophic event, which could have been the arrival of humans on the island or changes in the climate. Their disappearance did happen around the same time that humans first came to the island. That pattern is seen in some other mammoth populations. For example, in what is now Alaska and Yukon, mammoths died out 1,000 years after humans appeared.

Experts believe that a shrinking habitat due to a changing climate puts the population on a declining trend. Then, human activity and hunting likely sealed their fate.

Mammoth Ivory

Ivory from woolly mammoths is a hot commodity to this day. This is in part because it is illegal in many places to trade or sell elephant ivory, so people use mammoth ivory instead. Climate change and human activity are revealing more and more mammoth skeletons and tusks, especially in Siberia. A lucrative market has formed, mainly exporting mammoth ivory to China, where expert craftspeople carve it into beautiful and traditional designs and figures.

Early humans and Neanderthals used mammoth ivory to make tools and spear tips, and even used mammoth bones as a building material.

Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth

Some people want to bring back the woolly mammoth using preserved genetic evidence. This process is complicated. First, the genome of the extinct animal must be sequenced. Then, scientists must edit the DNA of a close living relative — meaning such a relative must still exist. Luckily, in the case of mammoths, the Asian elephant is a good candidate.

The people who want to recreate woolly mammoths believe their return to our ecosystem could help our modern problem of climate change. These experts believe that reintroducing grazers such as woolly mammoths to the current tundra could turn it back into grassland, which may help preserve the permafrost there. They also think it could help us to learn more about preserving endangered species that already exist today.