Woolly mammoth, how much does a mammoth weigh. Mammoths During what culture did mammoths become extinct?

(Osborn, 1928)

†Mammuthus sungari (Zhou, M.Z, 1959)

† Mammuthus trogontherii(Polig, 1885) - Steppe mammoth

Taxonomy on Wikispecies

Images on Wikimedia Commons

NCBI EOL

Encyclopedic YouTube

1 / 5

✪ HISTORIANS LIE TO US AGAIN. 100% Evidence that mammoths lived in the 19th CENTURY. ARE ALL MAMOTHS EXTINCTION?

✪ Alexey Tikhonov: “Mysteries of the mammoth” (SPB)

✪ DID Dinosaurs and Mammoths ALWAYS LIVE IN THE 20TH CENTURY? Why is this hidden?

✪ Mammoths (narrated by paleontologist Yaroslav Popov)

✪ Live mammoth in Siberia. Yakutsk (1943)

Subtitles

from encyclopedias we can find out that mammoths are an extinct genus of mammals from the elephant family; they were twice as heavy as the largest modern ones African elephants in the same encyclopedias we learn that mammoths became extinct in the last glacial period about 10 thousand years ago, but let's try to consider this issue from a seditious point of view in Turgenev's story the polecat and the Kalinich from the series of notes from a hunter there is an interesting phrase the polecat raised his leg and showed the boot I would probably make from mammoth skin in order to write this phrase Turgenev should have been several things are known that are quite strange for the middle of the 19th century in our understanding today, he should have known that there was such a beast at the moment and know what kind of skin he had, he should have known about the availability of this skin, because judging by the text, it is that a simple man wears boots made of mammoth skin for Turgenev it was not something out of the ordinary; it should be recalled that Turgenev wrote his notes almost like documentaries without fiction; therefore, in the note he simply conveyed his impressions of the meeting with interesting people and it happened in the Oryol province of the autumn region in Yakutia where mammoths are found and the cemetery there is an opinion that Turgenev expressed himself allegorically, we mean the thickness and quality of the boot, but why then weren’t elephant skins well known in the 19th century, but according to the official version there was awareness about mammoths insignificant until the beginning of the twentieth century, the only mammoth skeleton that could be seen was in the zoological museum, but it could hardly give an answer to the question of what the mother’s skin looks like, so the phrase dropped that I will not at least puzzle you, however, the harness was kept in the Tobolsk Museum of Local Lore In the 19th century, made specifically from mammoth skin, a mention of mammoths is also present in another famous writer of the 19th century, Jack London, his story, a fragment of a critical era, tells of a meeting of a hunter in Alaska with an unprecedented beast, which, according to the description, is like two peas in a pod, but not only writers they remember mammoths in their works, there is a sufficient amount of historical evidence of people meeting these animals, the largest number of mentions of such cases was collected by Anatoly Kartashov, here is evidence of the sixteenth century, the ambassador of the Austrian Emperor Croatian Sigismund Herberstein, who visited Muscovy in the mid-16th century in 1549, wrote in his notes about Muscovy in Siberia there is a great variety of birds and various animals, such as sable and martens, beavers, ermines, squirrels, and in the ocean they live on the walrus; in addition, the weight is exactly the same as polar bears, wolves, hares, please note that in the same row with very real beavers, squirrels and walruses there is some, if not fabulous, then as if a mysterious and unknown weight, however, this forest might not have been known only to Europeans, and for local residents this possibly rare endangered species did not represent anything mysterious, not only in the sixteenth century, but more than a century later in 1911, you wrote an essay in the silence of the towns, the trip rose and the narrow edge there are such lines to the tired Khanty pike, the pike is called a mammoth, this whole monster was covered with thick long hair and had large horns, sometimes all then, or among themselves, I’ll take such that the ice on the lakes broke with a terrible death and it turns out that in the sixteenth century almost everyone knew about mammoths including the Austrian ambassador, another legend is known that in 1581 the soldiers of the famous conqueror of Siberia Ermak saw huge hairy elephants in the dense taiga. Let's move on to the 19th century, the New York Herald newspaper wrote that US President Jefferson, who held the highest post from 1801 to 1809, became interested in the messages of the sled about mammoths, he sent a helmet with the nose of an envoy who, when he returned, stated fantastic things, according to the Eskimos, mammoths can still be found in remote areas on northeast The envoy really didn’t see the peninsula of living mammoths with my eyes, but a special Eskimo weapon will come to hunt them and this is not the only one known history the case of Eskimo weapons for hunting mammoths there are lines in an article published in San Francisco in 1899, some travelers along the fishing line wonder why the Eskimos would make and store weapons for hunting animals that became extinct at least 10 thousand years ago, here is another evidence of the end nineteenth century in the magazine max store for 1899 in a story called the murder of mothers, it is stated that the last mammoth was killed in the Yukon in the summer of 1891, of course now it is difficult to say what is true in this story and what is literary fiction, however at that time the story was considered to be already known to us towns writes in his essay a trip to the Solunsky region in 1911, according to the Ostyaks in Kent us of scam in the sacred forest, as in other times, mammoths live near the river and in the river itself, often in winter time you can see wide cracks on the ice of the river, and sometimes you can see that the ice is split and crushed into many small pieces; we eat all these are visible signs and results of the mammoth’s activity, playing out and diverging, the animal breaks the ice with its horns and back. Recently, about fifteen to twenty years ago, there was such a case on the lake of a mammoth barrel in its own way, the animal is meek and peace-loving and treats people kindly when meeting a person, the maman not only does not attack him, but even doesn’t even caress him in Siberia, you often have to listen to the stories of local peasants and come across the opinion that mammoths still exist but it’s just that it’s very difficult to see them; now there are only a few mammoths left; they, like most large animals, are now becoming rare; let’s trace the chronicle of contacts between humans and mammoths in the 20th century; Albert Moskvin from Krasnodar, who lived for a long time in the Mari SSR, talked with people who themselves saw woolly elephants; here’s a quote from a letter from before the Mari name of the mammoth, according to eyewitnesses, the Mari used to be seen more often than now in a herd of 45 heads, the Mari call this phenomenon about before the sound wedding of mammoths, the Mari told him in detail about the way of life of mammoths about their appearance about the relationship with the cubs of people and even about the funeral of a dead animal according to them in the words of a kind and affectionate abd, offended by people at night, he turned out the corners of the barns without breaking them and making a dull trumpet sound at the same time, according to the stories of local residents, even before the revolution, the mammoths forced the inhabitants of the lower villages to move to a new place shop and and and for whom what were in the area that are now called Medvedev's stories contain many interesting and surprising details, however, there is a strong conviction that there is no science fiction in them. According to this evidence, mammoths were seen and known well a hundred years ago, and this was in the Volga region of the European part of Russia, but here is evidence from Siberia in 1920, hunters observed two individuals mammoths in the interfluve of the Ob and Yenisei in the thirties, there are references to the life of mammoths in the area of ​​Lake Syrkovaya in the territory of the present Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Region, there are also later descriptions, for example, in 1954, a huntsman observed a mammoth in one of the reservoirs, similar meetings of residents of remote corners of our country with huge furry animals were described in the sixties, seventies and eighties of the 20th century, for example, in 1978, in the area of ​​the Indigirka River, a group of prospectors in the morning discovered mammoths swimming in the river in the amount of about 10 individuals; this story could be classified as a tale of invention, only this time marvelous animals were observed for half an hour by not a single frightened person, but by a whole group of adult men, it is clear that many will accept these stories, guided by the principle that until I see it, I don’t believe it; meanwhile, there are two videos on the Internet that show a living mother of mammoths, which is rightfully called fossils in our time and in fact I’m digging for the purpose of extracting tusks for the reason why mammoths and tusks drip from cliffs on the banks of rivers and so massively that a bill has been introduced into the State Duma equating mammoths to minerals and also introducing a tax on their extraction, science tells us that the distribution area mammoths were huge, but they dig them en masse for some reason, only here in the north the question arises: what led to the formation of these mammoth cemeteries, you can build the following logical chain of mammoths, there were many times there were a lot of them, they had to have a good food supply, for example, the daily ration of an elephant living in the Moscow Zoo is about 250 kilograms of food, which includes hay, grass, bread, vegetables and other products, even if the mammoths ate a little less with such appetites, they still could not for a long time wandering on glaciers as is traditionally depicted in all kinds of reconstructions, in turn, a good food supply suggests a slightly different, warmer glue in those places, a different climate in the Arctic Circle could only be if it was so in time not the Arctic mammoth tusks and the mammoths themselves are found underground it means some event happened on the roof and their servants group if the mammoths didn’t bury themselves in the ground then this new club could only have been brought by water that first gushed in and then went away a layer of sediment quite thick, meters and tens of meters means the amount of water that deposited such a layer must have been very large; mammoth carcasses are found well preserved; if their meat can be eaten, it means that the event that killed them did not happen tens of thousands of years ago, but relatively recently, and immediately after the burial of the corpses on young soil, they quickly froze, here are a few examples when paleontologists came to the river bank then were surprised at the preservation of the mammoth in permafrost, it spent almost 30 thousand years but the skin, muscles, some internal organs and most importantly the brain were preserved in Siberia in permafrost areas, Russian scientists discovered a mammoth carcass with well-preserved liquid blood and muscle tissue, members of the expedition of the Yakut North-Eastern Federal University and Russian Geographical Society or their research on Malo Lyakhovsky Island, the result was a unique find, they discovered the carcass of a female, the lower part of which was frozen into ice and was well preserved, but the most amazing liquid blood that flowed from the mammoth’s abdominal cavity even at an air temperature of minus 10 degrees Celsius is quite fresh in appearance to everyone red and again your light smells in some parts and I will say that you all will still add to this logical chain the research of Alexey Artemyev and Alexey Kungurov, who drew attention to the average age of the forests of Siberia about 300 years, of course there is a village older, but the dating of the supposed cataclysm, given these data, is still the same fluctuate on a scale of centuries, they span millennia; taking this into account, it becomes clear that there is massive evidence of living or recently living mammoths, which represent the remnants of a huge population; after all, over the last 200 years alone, more than a million pairs of mammoth tusks were exported from Russia, which means millions of mammoths populated the ecological niche in the territory Eurasia, at the same time, it is precisely the recent dates of the cataclysm that are the most painful and unacceptable for official science, because the very formulation of this problem gives rise to a huge number of new questions that someone really wants to answer

Phenotype

Extinction

Most mammoths went extinct about 10 thousand years ago during the last Vistula Ice Age in the Younger Dryas, simultaneously with the extinction of 34 genera of large animals (the Great Holocene Extinction). On this moment There are two main hypotheses for the extinction of mammoths: according to the first, Upper Paleolithic hunters played a significant or even decisive role in this, and the other, which explains the extinction to a greater extent by natural causes (the era of extreme flooding, which began 16 thousand years ago, rapid climate change about 10-12 thousand years ago, the disappearance of the food supply for mammoths). There are also more exotic assumptions, for example, due to the fall of a comet in North America or large-scale epidemics, but the latter remain marginal hypotheses that most experts do not support.

The first hypothesis was put forward in the 19th century by Alfred Wallace, when sites of ancient people with large accumulations of mammoth bones were discovered. This version quickly gained popularity. It is believed that Homo sapiens settled in northern Eurasia about 32,000 years ago, entered North America 15,000 years ago and probably quickly began actively hunting megafauna. But in favorable conditions in the vast tundra-steppes, their population was stable. Later, a warming occurred, during which the range of mammoths significantly decreased, as had happened before, but active hunting led to the almost complete extermination of the species. Scientists led by David Noguez-Bravo from National Museum natural sciences in Madrid, in support of these views, the results of large-scale modeling are cited.

Proponents of the second point of view believe that human influence is greatly overestimated. In particular, they point to a period of ten thousand years, during which the mammoth population grew 5-10 times, that the process of extinction of the species began even before the appearance of people in the corresponding territories, and that along with mammoths many other species of animals became extinct, including small ones, which were “neither enemies for the Cro-Magnons nor prey to be destroyed,” and that there is insufficient direct evidence of active hunting of mammoths by people - only 6 “places of slaughter and cutting of proboscideans” are known in Eurasia, and 12 in North America. Therefore, in this hypothesis, anthropogenic intervention is assigned a secondary role, and natural changes are considered the primary factors: changes in climate and food supply for animals and pasture area. The connection between extinction and climate change in the Upper Drias has been noticed for a long time. But for a long time there was no convincing justification for the fatalism of this particular cold snap, since this type experienced many warmings and colds. Researcher Vance Haynes from the University of Arizona again raised this question in 2008, and using data from several excavations, found that the onset of cooling and the extinction of megafauna coincided with an accuracy of up to 50 years. He also drew attention to the fact that the Upper Dryas sediments are dark in color due to their enrichment in organic particles, the composition of which indicates a much more humid atmosphere at that time, compared to what was previously.

The same question was raised in a publication in the journal Nature Communications in June 2012, where the results were published basic research international group scientists led by Glen MacDonald from the University of California. They tracked changes in the habitat of woolly mammoths and their impact on the population of the species in Beringia over the past 50 thousand years. The study used a significant amount of data on all radiocarbon dating of animal remains, human migration in the Arctic, climate and fauna changes. The main conclusion of scientists: over the past 30 thousand years, mammoth populations have experienced fluctuations in numbers associated with climatic cycles - a relatively warm period about 40-25 thousand years ago (relatively high numbers) and a cooling period about 25-12 thousand years ago (this is the so-called “ The last glaciation - when most mammoths migrated from northern Siberia to more southern regions). The migration was caused by a relatively sharp change in tundra fauna from tundra steppes (mammoth prairies) to tundra swamps at the beginning of the Allerød warming, but subsequently the steppes located to the south were also replaced coniferous forests. The role of people in their extinction was assessed as insignificant, and the extreme rarity of direct evidence of human hunting of mammoths was also noted. Two years earlier, Brian Huntley's research team published the results of their modeling of the climates of Europe, Asia and North America, which identified the main reasons for the predominance of herbaceous vegetation over large areas over time: low temperatures, dryness and low CO 2 content; and also revealed the direct influence of subsequent climate warming, increased humidity and CO 2 content in the atmosphere on the replacement of herbaceous communities by forests, which sharply reduced the area of ​​pastures.

In North America, the people known as the Clovis culture disappeared at the same time as the megafauna, so it is unlikely that they could have been involved in their extermination. Lately it has been acquiring more weight cosmic hypothesis of the extinction of megafauna in North America. This is due to the discovery of a thin layer of wood ash (supposedly evidence of large-scale fires), numerous finds of nanodiamonds, impact spherules and other characteristic particles throughout the continent, and finds of mammoth bones with holes from meteorite particles. The culprit is considered to be a comet, which had probably already broken up into a trail of debris by the time of the collision. In January 2012, a paper was published in PNAS about the results of a large scientific team's work on Mexico's Lake Cuitzeo. This publication marked the transition of this hypothesis from the category of marginal to the main hypotheses explaining the Younger Dryas crisis - climate cooling for a millennium, oppression and destruction of established ecosystems, extinction of glacial megafauna.

Asia's largest local concentration of remains Mammuthus primigenius is a burial in the area of ​​Volchya Griva in Novosibirsk region. Some of the bones bear traces of human processing, but the role of the Paleolithic population in the accumulation of the bone-bearing horizon of the Volch'ya Griva was insignificant - mass death mammoths on the territory of the Barabinsky refugium was caused by mineral starvation. 42% of samples of woolly mammoths discovered in the ancient oxbow lake of the Boryolekh River show signs of osteodystrophy - a disease of the skeletal system caused by metabolic disorders due to a lack or excess of vital macro- and microelements (mineral starvation).

Skeleton

In terms of its skeletal structure, the mammoth bears a significant resemblance to the living Indian elephant, which it was somewhat larger 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 located in the upper jaw, protruded forward, curved towards the top and converged towards the middle.

The molars, of which mammoths had one in each half of the jaw, are somewhat wider than those of an elephant, and are distinguished by a greater number and hardness of lamellar enamel boxes filled with dental substance. As they wore out, the mammoth's teeth, like those of modern elephants, were replaced with new ones; such a change could take place up to 6 times during its life.

History of the study

Bones and especially molar teeth of mammoths were found very often in the deposits of the Ice Age of Europe and Siberia and were known for a long time and for their huge size, with general medieval ignorance and superstition, were attributed to extinct giants. In Valencia, a mammoth molar was revered as part of the relics of St. Christopher, and back in 1789 the canons of St. Vincent carried the femur of a mammoth in his processions, passing it off as the remnant of the hand of the named saint. It was possible to get acquainted with the anatomy of the mammoth in more detail after the Tungus discovered in 1799 in the permafrost soil of Siberia, near the mouth of the Lena River, a whole mammoth corpse, washed by spring waters and perfectly preserved - with meat, skin and wool. 7 years later, in 1806, Adams, sent by the Academy of Sciences, managed to collect an almost complete skeleton of the animal, with some surviving ligaments, part of the skin, some entrails, eyes and up to 30 pounds of hair; everything else was destroyed by wolves, bears and dogs. In Siberia, mammoth tusks, washed away by spring waters and collected by the natives, were the subject of significant trade trade, replacing ivory in turning products.

Mammoth genome

Genetic groups

Legends of the peoples of Northern Europe, Siberia and North America

In 1899, a traveler wrote an article for a San Francisco daily newspaper about the Alaskan Eskimos who described a shaggy elephant by carving its image on a walrus ivory weapon. A group of researchers who went to the site did not find mammoths, but confirmed the traveler’s story, and also carried out an examination of weapons and asked where the Eskimos saw shaggy elephants; they pointed to the icy desert to the northwest.

Mammoth bone

Exhibits in museums

A unique stuffed adult woolly mammoth (the so-called “Berezovsky mammoth”) can be seen in

Mammoth skeletons can be seen:

Monuments

Mammoths in heraldry

The image of a mammoth can be seen on the coats of arms of some cities.

• 

  Mammoths in toponomics

  In the Taimyr Dolgano-Nenets district of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, in the Lower Taimyr basin there are such objects as the Mammoth River (named after the discovery of the skeleton of the Taimyr mammoth on it in 1948), Left Mammoth and Mammoth Lake. In the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug, on Wrangel Island, there are the Mammoth Mountains and the Mammoth River. A peninsula in the northeast of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, where the remains of the animal were found, is named after the mammoth.

  see also

  Notes

  1. BBC Ukrainian - Russian News Scientists Russia and Korea want to clone mammoths
  2. RUSSIAN SCIENTISTS TOLD HOW THE TRUNK HELPED MAMOTHS SURVIVE
  3. In Taimyr they found a unique mammoth Zhenya - with meat, wool and a hump
  4. Chubur A. A. Man and mammoth in the Paleolithic of the Pedesenia. Continuing the discussion // Desninskie antiquities (issue VII) Materials of the interstate scientific conference“History and Archeology of Podesenya”, dedicated to the memory of the Bryansk archaeologist and local historian, Honored Worker of Culture of the RSFSR Fyodor Mikhailovich Zavernyaev (11.28.1919 - 18.VI.1994). Bryansk, 2012
  5. Doctor of Geographical Sciences Yaroslav Kuzmin on the causes of the extinction of mammoths
  6. New data from genetics and archeology shed light on the history of the settlement of America Elementy.ru
  7. Marc A. Carrasco, Anthony D. Barnosky, Russell W. Graham. Quantifying the Extent of North American Mammal Extinction Relative to the Pre-Anthropogenic Baseline plosone.org December 16, 2009
  8. People have completed nature’s work of exterminating mammoths

It is still unclear why mammoths became extinct. And although they lived on the Arctic Wrangel Island until the time of the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, there is no written evidence about the reasons for the disappearance of mammoths from our planet.

If we discard assumptions about the fall of meteorites, volcanic eruptions and other natural disasters, the main reasons will be climate and people.

In 2008, an unusual accumulation of bones of mammoths and other animals was discovered, which could not have appeared as a result of natural processes, such as hunting by predators or the death of animals. These were the skeletal remains of at least 26 mammoths, and the bones were sorted by species.

Apparently, people for a long time kept the bones that were most interesting to them, some of which bear traces of tools. And in hunting weapons the people of the end of the ice age had no shortage.

How were carcass parts delivered to the sites? And Belgian archaeozoologists have an answer to this: they could transport meat and tusks from the butchering site using dogs.

Mammoths went extinct about 10 thousand years ago during the last Ice Age. Some experts do not rule out that humans also changed the climate... by destroying mammoths and other northern giants. With the disappearance large mammals producing large volumes of methane, the level of this greenhouse gas in the atmosphere should have decreased by about 200 units. This led to a cooling of 9-12°C about 14 thousand years ago.

Mammoths reached a height of 5.5 meters and a body weight of 10-12 tons. Thus, these giants were twice as heavy as the largest modern land mammals - African elephants.

In Siberia and Alaska, there are known cases of the discovery of mammoth corpses that were preserved due to their presence in the thickness of permafrost. Therefore, scientists are not dealing with individual fossils or several skeleton bones, but can even study the blood, muscles, and fur of these animals and also determine what they ate.

Mammoths had a massive body, long hair and long curved tusks; the latter could serve the mammoth for getting food from under the snow in winter. Mammoth skeleton:

In terms of its skeletal structure, the mammoth bears a significant resemblance to the living Indian elephant. Huge mammoth tusks, up to 4 m in length, weighing up to 100 kg, were located in the upper jaw, protruded forward, curved upward and diverged to the sides. Mammoth and mastodon are another extinct gigantic proboscis mammal:

It is interesting that as they wore out, the mammoth’s teeth (like those of modern elephants) were replaced with new ones, and such a change could take place up to 6 times during its life. Monument to the mammoth in Salekhard:

Most known species mammoths - woolly mammoth (lat. Mammuthus primigenius). It appeared in Siberia 200-300 thousand years ago, from where it spread to Europe and North America.

The woolly mammoth is the most exotic animal of the Ice Age and is its symbol. Real giants, mammoths at the withers reached 3.5 m and weighed 4-6 tons. Mammoths were protected from the cold by thick, long hair with developed undercoat, which was more than a meter long on the shoulders, hips and sides, as well as a layer of fat up to 9 cm thick. 12-13 thousand years ago, mammoths lived throughout Northern Eurasia and a large part of North America . Due to climate warming, the habitats of mammoths - the tundra-steppe - have decreased. Mammoths migrated to the north of the continent and for the last 9-10 thousand years lived on a narrow strip of land along the Arctic coast of Eurasia, which is currently for the most part flooded by the sea. The last mammoths lived on Wrangel Island, where they became extinct about 3,500 years ago.

In winter, the coarse wool of the mammoth consisted of hair 90 cm long. A layer of fat about 10 cm thick served as additional thermal insulation.

Mammoths are herbivorous; they ate mainly herbaceous plants (cereals, sedges, forbs), small shrubs (dwarf birch, willow), tree shoots and moss. In winter, in order to feed themselves, in search of food, they raked snow with their forelimbs and extremely developed upper incisors - tusks, the length of which in large males was more than 4 meters, and they weighed about 100 kg. Mammoth teeth were well adapted for grinding rough food. Each of the 4 teeth of a mammoth changed five times during its life. A mammoth ate 200-300 kg of vegetation per day, that is, he had to eat 18-20 hours a day and constantly move around in search of new pastures.

It is assumed that living mammoths were colored black or dark brown. Because they had small ears and short trunks (compared to modern elephants), the woolly mammoth was adapted to life in cold climates.

Thanks to mammoths, the rulers of the northern circumpolar steppes and tundras, ancient man survived in harsh conditions: they gave him food and clothing, shelter, and shelter from the cold. Thus, mammoth meat, subcutaneous and abdominal fat were used for nutrition; for clothing - skins, sinews, wool; for the manufacture of dwellings, tools, hunting equipment and equipment and crafts - tusks and bones.

During the Ice Age, the woolly mammoth was the largest animal in the Eurasian expanses.

It is assumed that woolly mammoths lived in groups of 2-9 individuals and were led by older females.

The life expectancy of mammoths was approximately the same as that of modern elephants, i.e. no more than 60-65 years old.

“By its nature, the mammoth is a meek and peace-loving animal, and affectionate towards people. When meeting a person, the mammoth not only does not attack him, but even clings and fawns over the person” (from the notes of Tobolsk local historian P. Gorodtsov, 19th century).

The largest number of mammoth bones are found in Siberia. Giant mammoth cemetery - New Siberian Islands. In the last century, up to 20 tons of elephant tusks were mined there annually. Monument to mammoths in Khanty-Mansiysk:

In Yakutia there is an auction where you can buy the remains of mammoths. approximate price A kilogram of mammoth ivory is $200.

Unique finds.

Adams' Mammoth

The world's first mammoth was found in 1799 in the lower reaches of the Lena River by hunter O. Shumakhov, who reached the Lena River delta in search of mammoth tusks. The huge block of frozen earth and ice where he found the mammoth tusk completely thawed only in the summer of 1804. In 1806, M. Adams, an associate professor of zoology at the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, who was passing through Yakutsk, learned about the find. Having gone to the place, he discovered the skeleton of a mammoth, eaten wild animals and dogs. The skin was preserved on the mammoth’s head; one ear, dried eyes and brain also survived, and on the side on which it lay there was skin with thick, long hair. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of the zoologist, the skeleton was delivered to St. Petersburg that same year. So, in 1808, for the first time in the world, a complete skeleton of a mammoth was mounted - Adams' mammoth. Currently, he, like the baby mammoth Dima, is on display at the museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.

In 1970, on the left bank of the Berelekh River, the left tributary of the Indigirka River (90 km northwest of the village of Chokurdakh in the Allaikhovsky ulus), a huge accumulation of bone remains was found that belonged to approximately 160 mammoths that lived 13 thousand years ago. Nearby was the dwelling of ancient hunters. In terms of the quantity and quality of preserved fragments of mammoth bodies, the Berelekh cemetery is the largest in the world. It indicates a massive death of weakened and snow-drifted animals.

Scientists tried to establish the cause of the death of a huge number of mammoths on the Berelech River. During these works, a frozen hind leg of a medium-sized adult mammoth, 170 cm long, was found. Over many thousands of years, the leg became mummified, but was preserved quite well - along with the skin and wool, individual strands of which reached a length of 120 cm. The absolute age of the Berelekh mammoth's leg was determined approximately at 13 thousand years. The age of other mammoth bones found, which were dated later, ranged from 14 to 12 thousand years. The remains of other animals were also found at the burial site. For example, next to the frozen leg of a mammoth, the frozen and mummified corpses of an ancient wolverine and a white partridge, which lived in the same era as mammoths, were discovered. The bones of other animals, woolly rhinoceros, ancient horse, bison, musk ox, reindeer, mountain hare, wolf, that lived in the area of ​​the Berelekh site during the Ice Age were relatively few - less than 1%. Mammoth bones accounted for more than 99.3% of all finds.

Currently, paleontological materials from the Berelekh cemetery are stored at the Institute of Diamond Geology and noble metals SB RAS in Yakutsk.

Shandri Mammoth

In 1971, D. Kuzmin discovered the skeleton of a mammoth that lived 41 thousand years ago on the right bank of the Shandrin River, which flows into the channel of the Indigirka River delta. Inside the skeleton was a frozen lump of entrails. Plant remains consisting of herbs, branches, shrubs, and seeds were found in the gastrointestinal tract. So, thanks to this, one of the five unique content remains gastrointestinal tract mammoths (cut size 70x35 cm), we managed to find out the animal’s diet. The mammoth was a large male, 60 years old, and apparently died from old age and physical exhaustion. The skeleton of the Shandrin mammoth is located at the Institute of History and Philosophy of the SB RAS.

Mammoth Dima

In 1977, a well-preserved 7-8 month old mammoth calf was discovered in the Kolyma River basin. It was a touching and sad sight for the prospectors who discovered the baby mammoth Dima (he was named after the spring of the same name, in the valley of which he was found): he was lying on his side with mournfully outstretched legs, with closed pelvises and a slightly crumpled trunk.

The find immediately became a world sensation due to its excellent preservation and possible reason death of a baby mammoth. The poet Stepan Shchipachev composed a touching poem about a baby mammoth who had fallen behind his mammoth mother, and an animated film was made about the unfortunate baby mammoth.

Yukagir mammoth

In 2002, near the Muksunuokha River, 30 km from the village of Yukagir, schoolchildren Innokenty and Grigory Gorokhov found the head of a male mammoth. In 2003 - 2004 the remaining parts of the corpse were excavated. The most well preserved are the head with tusks, most of the skin, the left ear and eye socket, as well as the left front leg, consisting of the forearm and with muscles and tendons. Of the remaining parts, cervical and thoracic vertebrae, part of the ribs, shoulder blades, the right humerus, part of the viscera, and wool were found. According to radiocarbon dating, the mammoth lived 18 thousand years ago. The male, about 3 m tall at the withers and weighing 4 - 5 tons, died at the age of 40 - 50 years (for comparison: the average life expectancy of modern elephants is 60 - 70 years), probably after falling into a pit. Currently, anyone can see a model of the mammoth’s head in the Mammoth Museum of the Federal State Scientific Institution “Institute of Applied Ecology of the North” in Yakutsk.

Part mammoth fauna included about 80 species of mammals that, thanks to a number of anatomical, physiological and behavioral adaptations, managed to adapt to living in the cold continental climate of periglacial forest-steppe and tundra-steppe regions with their permafrost, harsh winters with little snow and powerful summer insolation. Around the turn of the Holocene, about 11 thousand years ago, due to a sharp warming and humidification of the climate, which led to the unfreezing of the tundra-steppes and other fundamental changes in landscapes, the mammoth fauna disintegrated. Some species, such as the mammoth itself, the woolly rhinoceros, the giant deer, cave lion and others disappeared from the face of the earth. A number of large species of calloused and ungulates - wild camels, horses, yaks, saiga survived in the steppes Central Asia, some others have adapted to life in completely different natural areas(bison, kulan); many, such as reindeer, musk ox, arctic fox, wolverine, mountain hare and others, were forced far to the north and sharply reduced their area of ​​distribution. The reasons for the extinction of the mammoth fauna are not fully known. Over the long history of its existence, it has already experienced warm interglacial periods, and was then able to survive. Obviously, the latest warming has caused a more significant restructuring natural environment, or maybe the species themselves have exhausted their evolutionary capabilities.

Mammoths, woolly (Mammuthus primigenius) and Columbian (Mammuthus columbi), lived in the Pleistocene-Holocene over a vast territory: from the South and Central Europe to Chukotka, Northern China and Japan (Hokkaido Island), as well as in North America. The existence of the Columbian mammoth was 250 - 10, woolly 300 - 4 thousand years ago (some researchers also include southern (2300 - 700 thousand years old) and trogontherian (750 - 135 thousand years old) elephants to the genus Mammuthus). Contrary to popular belief, mammoths were not the ancestors of modern elephants: they appeared on earth later and died out without leaving even distant descendants. Mammoths roamed in small herds, sticking to river valleys and feeding on grass, branches of trees and bushes. Such herds were very mobile - collecting the required amount of food in the tundra-steppe was not easy. The size of the mammoths was quite impressive: large males could reach a height of 3.5 meters, and their tusks were up to 4 m long and weighed about 100 kilograms. A thick coat, 70-80 cm long, protected mammoths from the cold. Average duration life was 4550, maximum 80 years. The main reason for the extinction of these highly specialized animals is the sharp warming and humidification of the climate at the boundary of the Pleistocene and Holocene, snowy winters, as well as extensive marine transgression that flooded the shelf of Eurasia and North America.

The structural features of the limbs and trunk, the proportions of the body, the shape and size of the mammoth’s tusks indicate that it, like modern elephants, ate various plant foods. With the help of tusks, animals dug out food from under the snow and tore off the bark of trees; Wedge ice was mined and used in winter instead of water. To grind food, the mammoth had an upper and lower jaw only one very large tooth at a time. The chewing surface of these teeth was a wide, long plate covered with transverse enamel ridges. Apparently, in the warm season the animals fed mainly on herbaceous vegetation. In the intestines and oral cavity of the mammoths that died in the summer, cereals and sedges predominated; lingonberry bushes, green mosses and thin shoots of willow, birch, and alder were found in small quantities. The weight of an adult mammoth's stomach filled with food could reach 240 kg. It can be assumed that in winter, especially when there was a lot of snow, shoots of trees and shrubs became of primary importance in the diet of animals. The huge amount of food consumed forced mammoths, like modern elephants, to lead an active lifestyle and often change their feeding areas.

Adult mammoths were massive animals, with relatively long legs and a short body. Their height at the withers reached 3.5 m in males and 3 m in females. Characteristic feature The appearance of the mammoth was a sharp sloping back, and for old males - a pronounced cervical interception between the “hump” and the head. In mammoth calves, these exterior features were softened, and the upper line of the head and back was a single, slightly curved upward arc. Such an arc is also present in adult mammoths, as well as in modern elephants and is connected, purely mechanically, with the maintenance huge weight internal organs. The mammoth's head was larger than that of modern elephants. The ears are small, oval elongated, 5–6 times smaller than those of the Asian elephant, and 15–16 times smaller than those of the African elephant. The rostral part of the skull was quite narrow, the alveoli of the tusks were located very close to each other, and the base of the trunk rested on them. The tusks are more powerful than those of African and Asian elephants: their length in old males reached 4 m with a base diameter of 1618 cm, in addition, they were twisted up and inward. The tusks of females were smaller (2–2.2 m, diameter at the base 8–10 cm) and almost straight. The ends of the tusks, due to the peculiarities of foraging, were usually worn away only from the outside. The mammoths' legs were massive, five-toed, with 3 small hooves on the front legs and 4 on the hind legs; the feet are rounded, their diameter in adults was 40–45 cm. The special arrangement of the bones of the hand contributed to its greater compactness, and the loose subcutaneous tissue and elastic skin allowed the foot to expand and increase its area on soft marshy soils. But still the most unique feature appearance mammoth - a thick coat consisting of three types of hair: undercoat, intermediate and covering, or guard hair. The topography and color of the coat was relatively the same in males and females: a cap of black, forward-directed coarse hair, 15–20 cm long, grew on the forehead and crown, and the trunk and ears were covered with undercoat and a brown or brownish awn. The entire body of the mammoth was also covered with long, 80–90 cm guard hairs, under which a thick yellowish undercoat was hidden. The color of the skin of the body was light yellow or brown; dark pigment spots were observed in areas free from fur. During the winter, mammoths moulted; The winter coat was thicker and lighter than the summer coat.

Mammoths had a special relationship with primitive man. Mammoth remains at early Paleolithic human sites were quite rare and belonged mainly to young individuals. It seems that primitive hunters of that period did not hunt mammoths often, and the hunt for these huge animals was rather a random event. In Late Paleolithic settlements, the picture changes dramatically: the number of bones increases, the ratio of hunted males, females and young animals approaches the natural structure of the herd. The hunting of mammoths and other large animals of that period no longer acquired a selective, but a mass character; The main method of catching animals is driving them onto rocky cliffs, into trapping pits, onto the fragile ice of rivers and lakes, into swampy areas of swamps and on rafting grounds. The hunted animals were finished off with stones, darts and spears with stone tips. Mammoth meat was used for food, tusks were used to make weapons and crafts, bones, skulls and skins were used to build dwellings and ritual structures. Mass hunting by people of the Late Paleolithic, the growth in the number of tribes of hunters, the improvement of hunting tools and methods of production against the backdrop of constantly deteriorating living conditions associated with changes in familiar landscapes, according to some researchers, played a decisive role in the fate of these animals.

The importance of mammoths in the life of primitive people is evidenced by the fact that 20–30 thousand years ago, artists of the Cro-Magnon era depicted mammoths on stone and bone, using flint burins and brushes with ocher, ferric oxide and manganese oxides. The paint was first ground with fat or bone marrow. Flat images were painted on cave walls, on slate and graphite plates, and on fragments of tusks; sculptural - created from bone, marl or slate using flint burins. It is very possible that such figurines were used as talismans, family totems, or played another ritual role. Despite the limitations expressive means, many of the images are made very artistically, and quite accurately convey the appearance of fossil giants.

During the 18th and 19th centuries, a little more than twenty reliable finds of mammoth remains in the form of frozen carcasses, their parts, skeletons with remains of soft tissue and skin were known in Siberia. It can also be assumed that some of the finds remained unknown to science; many were discovered too late and could not be examined. Using the example of the Adams mammoth, discovered in 1799 on the Bykovsky Peninsula, it is clear that news about the found animals reached the Academy of Sciences only several years after they were discovered, and getting to the far corners of Siberia even in the second half of the twentieth century was not easy . The greatest difficulty was extracting the corpse from the frozen ground and transporting it. The work of excavating and delivering a mammoth discovered in the Berezovka River valley in 1900 (undoubtedly the most significant paleozoological discovery of the early twentieth century) can be called heroic without exaggeration.

In the 20th century, the number of finds of mammoth remains in Siberia doubled. This is due to the widespread development of the North, the rapid development of transport and communications, and the rise in the cultural level of the population. The first complex expedition using modern technology was a trip for the Taimyr mammoth, found in 1948 on an unnamed river, later called the Mammoth River. Removing the remains of animals “sealed” into the permafrost has become much easier these days thanks to the use of motor pumps that defrost and erode the soil with water. The “cemetery” of mammoths, discovered by N.F., should be considered a remarkable natural monument. Grigoriev in 1947 on the Berelekh River (the left tributary of the Indigirka River) in Yakutia. For 200 meters, the river bank here is covered with a scattering of mammoth bones washed out of the bank slope.

By studying the Magadan (1977) and Yamal (1988) mammoth calves, scientists were able to clarify not only many issues of the anatomy and morphology of mammoths, but also draw a number of important conclusions about their habitat and the causes of extinction. The last few years have brought new remarkable discoveries in Siberia: special mention should be made of the Yukagir mammoth (2002), which represents a unique, scientific point vision, material (the head of an adult mammoth with remains of soft tissue and hair was discovered) and a baby mammoth found in 2007 in the Yuribey River basin in Yamal. Outside Russia, it is necessary to note the finds of mammoth remains made by American scientists in Alaska, as well as a unique “trap cemetery” with the remains of more than 100 mammoths, discovered by L. Agenbrod in the town of Hot Springs (South Dakota, USA) in 1974.

The exhibits in the mammoth hall are unique - after all, the animals presented here disappeared from the face of the earth several thousand years ago. Some of the most significant of them need to be discussed in more detail.

Numerous mammoth bones have been found in sites of ancient Stone Age man; Drawings and sculptures of mammoths made by prehistoric man were also discovered. In Siberia and Alaska, there are known cases of the discovery of mammoth corpses that were preserved due to their presence in the thickness of permafrost. The main types of mammoths were no larger in size than modern elephants (while the North American subspecies Mammuthus emperor reached a height of 5 meters and a mass of 12 tons, and dwarf species Mammuthus exilis And Mammuthus 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 getting food from under the snow in winter. Mammoth molars with numerous thin dentin-enamel plates were well adapted for chewing coarse plant food.

Baby mammoth Dima extracted from permafrost

One of the latest, most massive and southernmost burials of mammoths is located in the Kargat district of the Novosibirsk region, in the upper reaches of the Bagan River in the area “Volchya Griva”. It is believed that there are at least 1,500 mammoth skeletons here. Some of the bones bear traces of human processing, which makes it possible to build various hypotheses about the residence of ancient people in Siberia.

Skeleton

In terms of its skeletal structure, the mammoth bears a significant resemblance to the living Indian elephant, which it was somewhat larger 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, protruded forward, bent upward and diverged to the sides.

The molars, of which mammoths had one in each half of the jaw, are somewhat wider than those of an elephant, and are distinguished by a large number and hardness of lamellar enamel boxes filled with dental substance.

Reconstructed appearance of a mammoth at the age of 5 years

History of the study

Map of finds of mammoth bones in Russia

American Indian legends about mammoths

1. Asian group that appeared more than 450 thousand years ago; 2. American group, which appeared about 450 thousand years ago; 3. 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 a mammoth burrows underground like a mole). A four-legged fossil animal similar to, but larger than, an elephant. Dictionary foreign words, included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910.… … Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

Sources for reconstructing the mythopoetic image of M. are images of M. (engraved, the oldest of them in the La Madeleine cave, France; paintings, sculptures), 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. related to him. Mammoth bone, its fossil fangs, used in crafts. Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary. IN AND. Dahl. 1863 1866 … Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary

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

Strongman, big man, closet, mastodon, brute, mammoth Dictionary of Russian synonyms. mammoth noun, number of synonyms: 10 big guy (36) ... Synonym dictionary

A message about mammoths, grade 5, will briefly tell you about the giant animals that inhabited our planet during the glaciation period. Also, a report on mammoths can be used while preparing for a lesson or writing an essay on a given topic.

Brief message about mammoths

Mammoths(or they were also called northern woolly elephants) are an extinct group of animals that lived on our planet a very long time ago, during a period of total cooling, about 1.6 million years ago.

The word "mammoth" is of Tatar origin: the term "mamma" means "earth". It is likely that given origin due to the fact that since time immemorial people have found surviving bones of giants in the ground. For example, the ancient inhabitants of the North thought that mammoths lived underground like moles.

Appearance of mammoths

The main species of these giant animals rarely exceeded modern elephants in size. Thus, the North American subspecies of mammoths reached a height of 5 m with a weight of 12 tons. And dwarf species of mammoths were no higher than 2 m and weighed up to 900 kg. Unlike elephants, mammoths had a massive body, short legs, long curved tusks and long hair. Animals used their tusks to obtain food for themselves in winter, picking it out from under the thick snow. The molars had numerous, thin dentin-enamel plates that helped chew rough plant food.

Where did mammoths live?

Mammoths lived in Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Paleontological excavations by scientists have shown that the animals led a nomadic lifestyle and constantly moved from one place to another, moving in the direction of glacial drift. In Europe, during harsh snowy winters, mammoths roamed the territory of the modern Crimean peninsula and the coast Mediterranean Sea. They inhabited cold, little snow-covered and dry steppes.

What did mammoths eat?

Since mammoths lived during the Ice Age, their diet consisted of scanty vegetation. When examining the found animals, remains of larch and pine twigs, wild caraway and sedge leaves were found in their stomachs. fir cones, flowers and moss.

Why did mammoths become extinct?

Paleontologists believe that humans caused the disappearance of mammoths. They were the first creatures to suffer such a sad fate. The giants' body was covered with thick, long and warm hair, which most likely attracted ancient man, who was looking for a way to warm himself in the cold and insulate his home. People also hunted them for their tasty, fatty and nutritious meat. Therefore, living mammoths were only seen primitive people, which caused the death of these animals.

• Modern naturalists were lucky enough to study these animals thanks to paleontological excavations, during which it was possible to find not only animal skeletons, but also entire frozen carcasses. Thus, in 1901, the so-called Berezovsky mammoth was discovered. His stuffed animal is kept in the Zoological Museum of St. Petersburg. Its body is covered with fur, 35 cm long. Underneath it, scientists discovered a soft and warm undercoat, subcutaneous fat, which was located on the shoulders. There were remains of undigested food in the mammoth's stomach.
• In 1977, at the mouth of the Siberian Dima River, a small mammoth was found, whose age is 44 thousand years.
• Mammoths had a hump on their back, like camels, where they stored fat reserves.
• Every day the mammoth needed 180 kg of food to maintain health. African elephant, for example, eats 300 kg of food.
• The giants' ears were smaller than those of modern elephants. This is due to the cold climate.
• The mammoth, from 30,000 to 12,000 years ago, was the most popular subject of Neolithic artists. He was depicted on rocks in caves Western Europe. For example, cave paintings with mammoths can be seen in France in the Roufignac cave.

We hope that the report on mammoths helped to learn about the first living creatures whose extinction was caused by man. You can leave a short story about mammoths using the comment form below.