When the Pyramids were built woolly mammoths still roamed the Earth.
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photo credit Geoff Peters |
- Contrary to common belief, the woolly mammoth was hardly mammoth in size. They were roughly about the size of modern African elephants.
- The ears of a woolly mammoth were shorter than the modern elephant’s ears.
- Scientists can discern a woolly mammoth’s age from the rings of its tusk, like looking at the rings of a tree.
- The woolly mammoth was not the only “woolly” type of animal. The woolly rhinoceros, also known as the Coelodonta, co-existed with the woolly mammoth, walking the Earth during the Pleistocene epoch. Like the woolly mammoth, the woolly rhino adapted to the cold with a furry coat, was depicted by human ancestors in cave paintings and became extinct around the same time.
- Cave paintings drawn by ice age humans show the important relationship they had with the woolly mammoths. The Rouffignac cave in France has 158 depictions of mammoths, making up about 70% of the represented animals that date back to the Upper Paleolithic period. There is also evidence of the use of bones and tusks by humans to create portable art objects, shelters, tools, furniture and even burials.
- Today, the hunt is on for woolly mammoth tusks in the Arctic Siberia. Due to global warming, the melting permafrost has begun revealing these hidden ivory treasures for a group of local tusk-hunters to find and sell. A tusk can range from 10-13 foot in length and a top-grade mammoth tusk is worth around $400 per pound. Mammoth ivory, unlike elephant ivory, is legal.
- The first fully documented woolly mammoth skeleton was discovered in 1799. It was brought to the Zoological Museum of the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Science in 1806 where Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius put the pieces together.
- The coat of a woolly mammoth consisted of a “guard” of foot long hairs, and an undercoat of shorter hairs. Preserved mammoth hair looks orange in color, however researchers believe the pigment was changed because of prolonged burial in the ground.
- Even a kid can discover a preserved mammoth. In September 2012 in Russia, an 11-year-old boy named Yevgeny “Zhenya” Salinder happened upon an extremely well-preserved woolly mammoth carcass while walking his dogs. The remains were of a 16-year-old male woolly mammoth that died about 30,000 years ago. The discovery helped scientists conclude that the large “lumps” on a mammoth’s back were extra stores of fat to help it survive winters. The mammoth was nicknamed “Zhenya.”
- The final resting place of woolly mammoths was Wrangel Island in the Arctic. Although, most of the woolly mammoth population died out by 10,000 years ago, a small population of 500-1000 woolly mammoths lived on Wrangel Island until 1650 BC. That’s only about 4,000 years ago! For context, Egyptian Pharaohs were midway through their empire and it was about 1000 years after the Giza pyramids were built. The reason for the demise of these woolly mammoths are unknown.