Woolly mammoth

Mammuthus primigenius · The woolly mammoth was an extinct, elephant-like giant covered in fur that lived on the cold mammoth steppe of northern Eurasia and North America.

Also called Wooly mammoth.

It lived about 0.4 to 0.004 million years ago.

Taxonomy

Where its fossils were found

Northern Europe, Asia and North America (Siberia, Alaska, Yukon, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands).

Fun facts

• Woolly mammoths had small ears and a short tail, which helped them avoid frostbite and heat loss in the freezing cold.
• A woolly mammoth went through six sets of molars in its life, and when the last set wore out, it could no longer chew and would starve.
• A big adult mammoth needed to eat about 180 kg of food every day and may have spent as long as 20 hours a day foraging.
• The tip of a mammoth's trunk may have worked like a built-in mitten: it was not furry, but it could be warmed by curling it into a fleshy fold.

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Facts and taxonomy adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).