Mammoth

On this occasion I want to discuss about mammoths,.
An ancient animals which is also the ancestor of the elephant,.
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Mammoth, a well known name that should strictly be applied to one species of large, hairy elephant that lived during the Pliocene period, but which now refers to a whole group of large extinct elephants. There is only one genus, Elephas and although mammoths occured in a number of forms, the most remarkable was the Woolly mammoth, that has been found on a number of ocassion frozen in the Siberian ice. A scientific group in Moscow dined on mammoth steaks in the early years of this century.

The mammoth has often been represented as a beast of gigantic proportions, but this is only partly true. During the Kansan Ice Age a bull mammoth might have stood 17 ft (5.2 m) at the shoulder, which would have given it a gross weight in the order of 9.8 tons (9,957 kg). With the passage of time, a process of degeneration set in and by the beginning of the Wisconsin Ice Age, a mature bull would have been mere 10 ft (3.05 m) at the shoulder, with a weight of 4,5 tons (4,572 kg), which is slightly smaller than the elephant of today. Remains of mammoths recovered from the area of Krems on the Danube have shown that in mammoth terms, they had reached the stage of becoming dwarfs. In general appearance the mammoth resembled a large elephant but was covered with reddish brown hair. The length and curvature of the tusks, which were far longer and heavier than any tusks today. The trunk was thicker at the base and somewhat less flexible than in the modern elephant, and the head was altogether longer and had a higher crown. Another major feature was the presence of large agglomeration a fatty tissue on the back slightly behind the shoulders, which was presumably connected with food storage. It is a natural progression  that such size should have required massive bones to form a frame capable of supporting the great weight involved, but in the head this rule does not hold true. The great size and weight of the tusks required a considerable decrease in the weight of other bones, and the result of this was the formation of hollow bones in the head and greatly anlarge sinuses.


The major points of difference in the structure of the teeth of the mammoths and the earlier forms indicated why these animals should have representative in the form of the elephants still living today. One of the major problems of all very large animals especially the herbivores, is how to consume sufficient food to keep the body going with out wearing out the teeth. This problem was solved in the mammoth by the development of a shortened jaw which only bore four teeth on each side at any one time. As the teeth were worn down, they were pushed out and replaced by new teeth moving in from behind. The tusks were the only representation of anterior teeth.


During the late Pliocene period and the more recent Pleistocene, the various species of mammoth lived throughout North America, Eurasia, the Mediterranean islands and Africa, with a few in South America. They manage to survive over a very wide range of climate and temperature, and the fossil and preserved remains have shown a wide variation in the amount of hair covering the body. The range was obviously governed by the availability and type of food material that they needed to survive, The decline of the mammoths can be attributed to a combination of factors, none of which appears to be linked with a shortage of food, as they fed on grass, the sprouts and tender growth of young conifers, reindeer moss and other tundra plants, all of which remained in abundance. The main reason for their eventual disappearance may well have been that in the post-glacial period the areas in which the mammoth lived were subjected to heavy and prolonged rainfall, which would have constituted a radical change from the dry air of the normal polar type of climate. In addition to the onset of the wet condition, many individuals were doubtless killed in avalanches, or perished in blizzard, while yet others would have died through being unaccustomed to the dangers of crossing lakes and river that were know covered by thin sheets of ice and layers of snow that could not support the animals' great weight. The crevasses covered only by a thin snow bridge also took their toll of life. The other factor was that the mammoths has already begun to show all the symptoms of a degenerate species, and it is likely that their shrunken state was totally unsuited to the new conditions of life. It is known that many of the now fossil animals suffered from a variety of diseases, including rickets, cancer and caries, and it is also possible that the degeneration of these animal made them that much more susceptible to these disease.

There are over 350 species of fossil proboscideans and many of them are normally called mommoths or mastodons. By far the best known  of these numerous species and the one that strictly should be called mammoth is that known as Elephas primigenius,  the Woolly mammoth. It was given the name mammoth or mammut by the peoples of northern Asia. The origin of this word is unknown but is believed by some people to mean an animal living underground, like a mole, and among the peoples of Siberia there are many legends suggesting that the mammoth is still living underground but the moment it exposes itself at the surface it dies. The legends are based on the finding from time to time of mammoth 'mummies' exposed in the frozen soil of the tundra, complete with flesh, skin and hair.


Because of their size and their abundance in surface deposits, the bones of E. primigenius were probably the first fossils to attract the attention of men. The Ancient Greeks collected them and they were the first fossil vertebrates to be scientifically studied in the 18th century.