Video of Mammoth tooth - excellent condition

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Woolly Mammoth original tooth - baby Mammoth

Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius)

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.

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. 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.

Wooly Mammoth was a cold climate dweller equipped with a thick layer of fat for insulation, and an exterior of long black hair. The Wooly Mammoth was smaller than most mammoths, and had a hump of fat behind its domed head. It fed on low tundra vegetation in which it scraped away snow and ice from with its ivory tusks. Several well preserved remains have been found in Siberia and Alaska and cave paintings in Spain and France show depictions of the Wooly Mammoth as seen by early humans....