The solution to the fate of woolly mammoths can shed light on what happened on our planet many tens and hundreds of years ago. Modern paleontologists are studying the remains of these giants in order to find out more precisely how they looked, what kind of life they led, who they are to modern elephants and why they died out. The results of the research work will be discussed below.

Mammoths are large herd animals belonging to the elephant family. Representatives of one of their varieties, called the woolly mammoth (mammuthus primigenius), inhabited the northern regions of Europe, Asia and North America presumably in the range from 300 to 10 thousand years ago. With favorable climatic conditions they did not leave the territory of Canada and Siberia, and in harsh times they crossed the borders of modern China and the United States, ended up in Central Europe and even in Spain and Mexico. In that era, Siberia was inhabited by many other unusual animals, which paleontologists combined into a category called "mammoth fauna". In addition to the mammoth, it includes such animals as woolly rhinoceros, primitive bison, horse, tour, etc.

Many mistakenly believe that woolly mammoths are the progenitors of modern elephants. In fact, both species simply have a common ancestor, and, therefore, a close relationship.

What did the animal look like?

According to the description compiled at the end of the 18th century by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, the woolly mammoth is a giant animal, whose height at the withers reached about 3.5 meters with an average weight of 5.5 tons, and a maximum weight of up to 8 tons! The length of the coat, consisting of coarse hair and thick soft undercoat, reached more than a meter. The thickness of mammoth skin was almost 2 cm. The summer coat was somewhat shorter and not as thick as the winter coat. Most likely, she had a black or dark brown color. Scientists explain the brown color of the specimens found in the ice by the fading of the wool.

According to another version, a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and the presence of wool are evidence that mammoths constantly lived in a warm climate with an abundance of food. Otherwise, how would they be able to work up such significant body fat? Scientists who adhere to this opinion cite two types of modern animals as an example: rather plump tropical rhinos and slender reindeer. The presence of wool in a mammoth should also not be considered evidence of a harsh climate, because the Malaysian elephant also has a hairline and at the same time feels great living on the equator itself.

Many thousands of years ago high temperatures in the Far North were provided with the help of the greenhouse effect, which was caused by the presence of a steam-water dome, due to which abundant vegetation was present in the Arctic. This is confirmed by the many remains of not only mammoths, but also other heat-loving animals. So, in Alaska, skeletons of camels, lions and dinosaurs were found. And in areas where today there are no trees at all, thick and rather high trunks have been found along with the skeletons of mammoths and horses.

Let us return to the description of mammuthus primigenius. The length of the tusks of older individuals reached 4 meters, and the mass of these bony processes twisted upwards was more than a centner. The average length of the tusks varied within 2.5 - 3 m with a weight of 40 - 60 kg.

Mammoths also differed from modern elephants in their smaller ears and trunk, the presence of a special growth on the skull, and a high hump on the back. In addition, the spine of their woolly relative in the back curved sharply down.

The latest woolly mammoths living on Wrangel Island were significantly inferior in size to their progenitors, their height at the withers was a little less than 2 meters. But despite this, in the era ice age this animal was largest representative fauna throughout Eurasia.

Lifestyle

The basis of the diet of mammoths was vegetable food, the average daily volume of which included almost 500 kg of various greens: grass, leaves, young tree branches and needles. This is confirmed by studies of the contents of the stomachs of mammuthus primigenius and indicates that giant animals chose to inhabit areas where both tundra and steppe flora were present.

Giants lived up to 70 - 80 years. They became sexually mature at 12-14 years of age. The most viable hypothesis suggests that the way of life of these animals was the same as that of elephants. That is, mammoths lived in a group of 2-9 individuals, which was headed by the eldest female. Males, on the other hand, led a solitary lifestyle and joined groups only during the rut.

Artifacts

Bones of mammuthus primigenius are found in almost all regions of the northern hemisphere of our planet, but Eastern Siberia is the most generous for such “gifts from the past”. During the life of the giants, the climate in this region was not harsh, but mild, temperate.

So, in 1799, on the banks of the Lena, the remains of a woolly mammoth were first found, which was called “Lensky”. A century later, this skeleton became the most valuable exhibit of the new St. Petersburg Zoological Museum.

Later, such mammoths were found on the territory of Russia: in 1901 - "Berezovsky" (Yakutia); in 1939 - "Oeshsky" (Novosibirsk region); in 1949 - "Taimyrsky" (Taimyr Peninsula); in 1977 - (Magadan); in 1988 - (the Yamal peninsula); in 2007 - (Yamal peninsula); in 2009 - baby mammoth Khroma (Yakutia); 2010 - (Yakutia).

The most valuable finds include the "Berezovsky mammoth" and the baby mammoth Khroma - individuals completely frozen in a block of ice. According to paleontologists, they have been in ice captivity for more than 30 thousand years. Scientists managed to obtain not only ideal samples of different tissues, but also to get acquainted with food from the stomach of animals that had not had time to be digested.

The richest place for the remains of mammoths are the New Siberian Islands. According to the descriptions of the researchers who discovered them, these territories are almost entirely composed of tusks and bones.

Thanks to the material collected in 2008, researchers from Canada managed to decipher 70% of the woolly mammoth genome, and 8 years later, their Russian colleagues completed this grandiose work. Over many years of painstaking work, they were able to collect about 3.5 billion particles into a single sequence. In this they were helped by the genetic material of the aforementioned Khroma mammoth.

Reasons for the extinction of mammoths

Scientists around the world have been arguing for two centuries about the reasons for the disappearance of woolly mammoths from our planet. During this time, many hypotheses have been put forward, the most viable of which is considered to be a sharp cooling caused by the destruction of the steam-water dome.

This could happen for various reasons, for example, due to the fall of an asteroid to Earth. Heavenly body during the fall, the once-united continent was split, due to which the water vapor above the planet's atmosphere first condensed, and then poured a strong downpour (about 12 m of precipitation). This provoked an intense movement of powerful mud flows, which on their way carried away animals and formed stratigraphic layers. With the disappearance of the greenhouse dome, ice and snow bound the Arctic. As a result of this, all representatives of the fauna were instantly buried in the permafrost. Therefore, some woolly mammoths are found "fresh frozen" with clover, buttercups, wild beans, and gladioli in their mouths or stomachs. Neither the listed plants, nor even their distant relatives do not grow in Siberia now. Because of this, paleontologists insist on the version that mammoths were killed at lightning speed due to a climate catastrophe.

This assumption interested paleoclimatologists and, taking the results of drilling as a basis, they came to the conclusion that in the period from 130 to 70 thousand years ago, enough mild climate. It can be compared with the modern climate of the north of Spain.

July 17, 2017

Mammuthus primigenius is a kind of symbol of Russian paleontology. This is the second nearly complete mammoth skeleton found on Earth. It was discovered in 1842 by the Russian industrialist A.I. Trofimov in the northeast of the Gydan Peninsula in Siberia. The skeleton was donated to the Moscow Society of Naturalists. It was exhibited at the Zoological Museum of Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov, and then transferred to the Paleontological Museum. This mammoth lived about 40 thousand years ago, had a height of about 3 meters and a weight of more than 5 tons.

Mammoth is one of the most numerous representatives of the proboscis order. A relative of modern Indian and African elephants. It reached a height of 2.5-3 m. The large skull is characterized by strongly swollen frontal and parietal bones, which had a porous structure inside. Strong neck muscles were attached to the highly raised neck, which supported the heavy head. The external nostrils are shifted upwards and above them is an outgrowth of the nasal bones, to which the muscles of the trunk were attached. The premaxillary and maxillary bones form alveoli, in which large curved tusks sit. Cheek teeth are highly crowned, their crown consists of separate plates covered with external cementum. Only one tooth (premolar or molar) functioned at a time in each half of the jaw. This provided a change of teeth throughout life. Mammoths fed mainly on grass, shoots of shrubs and, less often, trees. Time of their existence: the end of the middle and late Pleistocene. On the islands of the Arctic Ocean, they survived until the middle of the Holocene. The range of mammoths covered the entire northern Eurasia, including England, Ireland and North America. They also penetrated into Mongolia and northern China.

Features of the structure of mammoths

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Mammoth, with its weight of 5-6 tons, consisted, like other mammals, of bones, muscles, fat, skin and various internal organs. At the same time, the mammoth skeleton included 123 massive bones, which was due to the need to have a very strong skeleton.

Thick, strong muscles, which had a considerable mass, were attached to the bones of the skeleton. So, if all the muscles, or in other words mammoth meat, were used for food, then the whole family ancient man I could eat it for two whole years. The muscles of an adult mammoth were covered with a thick layer of subcutaneous fat and thick, tough, folded skin. The skin of a mammoth for our ancestors was a real carpet that covered an area of ​​20 square meters. Such a carpet made of mammoth skin was very soft and warm, since the soft hairs of the mammoth undercoat, usually hidden under strands of covering hair, were about 5-15 cm long.

If you look at the mammoth from the side, it will seem humpbacked. The hump, and this part of the body in animals is called the withers, is located approximately in the place where the neck passes into the back. This is due to the fact that in the mammoth the thoracic vertebrae have long, long processes to which powerful back muscles were attached. Fat deposits also accumulated here. The withers is the highest point on the body of a standing mammoth and it is on it that the growth of the animal is measured. In an adult large male, it towered 3.5 m above the ground, while the back of the mammoth's body was just below the withers. The mammoth's body ended in a short, hairy tail.

Since mammoth wool is often found in permafrost regions in Yakutia, scientists were able to study its structure in sufficient detail. The wool of the mammoth consists of hair of two colors: a soft light brown undercoat about 5-15 cm long and long covering guard hairs, which are much thicker and stiffer than the hairs of the undercoat.

On the sides of the body and from the back, a meter long guard hair hung down in strands of brown-brown and black coarse hair. Under the belly, they descended almost to the ground and formed a kind of “skirt”. From a distance, a mammoth could be mistaken for a moving woolen mountain.

In front, on the short neck of a mammoth, sat a large shaggy head with comparatively small ears. In shape, the ears of the mammoth are in many ways similar to human ones and were tightly pressed to the head. The front of the head was crowned with two curved tusks, between which a very mobile trunk hung down to the ground.

The trunk of mammoths, like that of other elephants, is a long nose, fused with upper lip. It consists of many longitudinal and circular muscles covered with transverse folds of thick skin. Thanks to them, the trunk can shrink and stretch, as well as wriggle like a snake. At the end of the trunk there were very sensitive folds-outgrowths. Unlike elephants, the mammoth's trunk was covered with wool, and its terminal processes were longer than those of modern elephants. The trunk replaced the mammoth's hands and could perform a wide variety of movements: pick up various, rather small, objects from the ground, pluck grass and leaves, peel the bark from trees, grab and bend branches and small trees.

Since the mammoths had a very short neck, he could not lower his head to the ground to tear the grass with his lips. Therefore, if it were not for the trunk, the mammoths would not be able to eat, and the mammoth also drank with the help of the trunk. He drew up to 10 liters of water into the nasal openings at a time, and then poured it into his mouth.

In the mouth there were powerful teeth designed to feed on plant foods. Mammoth teeth are similar in appearance to large graters. Each tooth consists of individual dentine plates covered with enamel. The plates are fastened together with layers of cement. The chewing surface (crown) of the tooth is oval in shape, the ridges of the plates protrude onto its surface, forming hard tubercles. These teeth are very well adapted for grinding food. A mammoth has only two teeth in each jaw. From chewing food, they are gradually erased. At a certain time, new teeth begin to grow to replace them from behind. They prop up the worn ones, gradually forcing them out. Old teeth fall out and new ones take their place. During the life of a mammoth, there are six changes of teeth. Milk teeth change three times, then permanent teeth three times.

The most notable feature of the mammoth is its tusks. The tusks are the front upper incisors that have changed in a special way, they do not change as often. In infancy, mammoths have milk tusks only a few centimeters long, they are not even visible on the surface. Then they fall out and there are already real tusks that grow all their lives.

The tusks are held in special tubular outgrowths of the skull - the alveoli. The tusks of males are bent upwards and sideways. Moreover, the right tusk to the left, and the left to the right, as if in the direction of each other. Mammoth tusks are much larger than the tusks of modern elephants. In the largest males, tusks could reach 4-4.5 m in length and weigh up to 100 kg. Their diameter at the base is about 18-19 cm. Mammoth actively used tusks throughout his life for various jobs. From this, at the ends of the tusks, they usually grind down along the outer edge and sometimes even break.

The mammoth's feet resembled short pillars and had a diameter of 35-50 cm, and the surface of the feet was hard as a horn. In front of each mammoth leg there were 3 small nails that looked like rounded plates.

Numerous bones of mammoths have been found in the sites of the ancient man of the Stone Age; drawings and sculptures of mammoths made by prehistoric man were also found. In Siberia and Alaska, there are known cases of finding the corpses of mammoths, preserved due to their stay in the thickness of permafrost. The main types of mammoths did not exceed modern elephants in size (at the same time, the North American subspecies mammuthus imperator reached a height of 5 meters and a mass of 12 tons, and dwarf species Mammothus exilis And Mammothus lamarmorae did not exceed 2 meters in height and weighed up to 900 kg), but had a more massive body, shorter legs, long hair and long curved tusks; the latter could serve the mammoth for food in winter time from under the snow. Mammoth molars with numerous thin dentin-enamel plates were well adapted for chewing coarse plant food.

Mammoth Dima extracted from permafrost

One of the latest, most massive and southernmost burials of mammoths is located on the territory of the Kargatsky district of the Novosibirsk region, in the upper reaches of the Bagan River in the Volchya Griva area. It is estimated that there are at least 1,500 mammoth skeletons here. Some of the bones bear traces of human processing, which allows us to build various hypotheses about the habitation of ancient people in Siberia.

Skeleton

According to the structure of the skeleton, the mammoth bears a significant resemblance to the living Indian elephant, which was somewhat superior in size, reaching 5.5 m in length and 3.1 m in height. Huge mammoth tusks, up to 4 m in length, weighing up to 100 kg, were inserted into the upper jaw, pushed forward, bent upwards and diverged to the sides.

The molars, which the mammoths had one in each half of the jaw, are somewhat wider than those of the elephant, and differ big amount and hardness of lamellar enamel boxes filled with dental substance.

Reconstructed appearance of a 5-year-old mammoth

History of study

Map of finds of mammoth bones in Russia

Native American legends about mammoths

1. Asian group, which appeared more than 450 thousand years ago; 2. american group, which appeared about 450 thousand years ago; 3. an intercontinental group that migrated from North America about 300 thousand years ago

Notes

Synonyms:

See what "Mammoth" is in other dictionaries:

    - (from Tat. mamma earth, because the Tungus and Yakuts think that the mammoth burrows underground like a mole). A four-legged fossil similar to an elephant but larger. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910. ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

    The sources for the reconstruction of the mythopoetic image of M. are the images of M. (engraved, the oldest of them in the cave of La Madeleine, France; picturesque, sculptural), known throughout northern zone Eurasia, China and some adjacent ... ... Encyclopedia of mythology

    Mammoth, mamut husband. a fossil animal, partly similar to an elephant, but even larger than it. related to him. Mammoth bone, fossil fangs of it, going to handicrafts. Dictionary Dahl. IN AND. Dal. 1863 1866 ... Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary

    - (Mammuthus primigenius), an extinct species of elephant. Known from the 2nd half of the Pleistocene of Eurasia and North. America. In size, it was somewhat larger than the modern. elephants, had a more massive body, shorter legs and tail, long hair and ... ... Biological encyclopedic dictionary

    Strong man, big man, closet, mastodon, big man, mammoth Dictionary of Russian synonyms. mammoth n., number of synonyms: 10 tall (36) ... Synonym dictionary

Niramin - Jun 2nd, 2016

Mammoths (lat. Mammuthus) are long-extinct mammals, very reminiscent of elephants, but much larger than the species living today.

They are usually depicted as furry giants with curved tusks. Information about these animals was obtained as a result of archaeological excavations at the sites of the sites of the ancient man of the Stone Age. In the northern regions, vast cemeteries of mammoths have been found, in which animal corpses have been preserved in permafrost. The fact that people hunted the mammoth is evidenced by cave paintings and figurines of mammoths made by prehistoric man.

What did this unusual animal look like? Scientists claim that there were several types of mammoths: from five meters in size (weighing about 10 tons) to two meters in height (weighing no more than 950 kg).

Wool helped to survive in a cold climate, tusks were needed to extract food from under the snow. The teeth of the mammoth had a special structure, with which the animals chewed coarse grassy feed. The trunk expanded towards its end and was adapted to use snow instead of water, and was used as a tool for raking snowdrifts.

The structure of the northern species of mammoths is characterized by a hump on the back, which consisted of fatty deposits, by analogy with the hump of a camel.

The discovery of large mammoth cemeteries in the northern regions suggested that mammoths died out as a result of some catastrophe on a cosmic scale. However official science finds more likely the hypothesis that several factors influenced the extinction of mammoths:
— abrupt change climate (10 - 12 thousand years ago);
- change chemical composition atmosphere and soil;
activities of prehistoric people.

It is believed that these animals lost their usual food supply and could not adapt to the new conditions, and the change in the chemical composition of the atmosphere and soil led to mass diseases of mammoths. The fact that mammoths were an object of hunting for people also contributed to the reduction in the population.

See a selection of drawings and photos of mammoths:









Photo: Mammoth skeleton


Photo: Unloading the Yakut baby mammoth Yuki.

Photo: Chauvet cave mammoth (Rock painting).

Photo of a mammoth rock painting in Rouffignac Cave.

Video: Yakut Mammoths. Yakutia.

Video: Why did mammoths become extinct? Space catastrophe 13 thousand years ago.

Video: A copy of the Chauvet grotto is a new landmark of France (news)