Woolly mammoth

Woolly mammoths Temporal range: Pleistocene – Holocene
Woolly mammoth
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	Elephantidae
Genus:	†Mammuthus
Binomial name
Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799)

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), is a species of mammoth. They were large elephants which lived during the ice ages. The animal is known from bones and frozen carcasses from northern North America and northern Eurasia. The best preserved carcasses were found in Siberia. They are perhaps the most well known species of mammoth. Woolly mammoths are now extinct, so we can't see them anymore.

This mammoth species was first recorded in deposits of a former glaciation in Eurasia, perhaps 150,000 years ago.^[1][2]

The woolly mammoth coexisted with early humans, who hunted them. Their bones and tusks were used as tools, and dwellings. Mammoths were also hunted for food. The species disappeared from most of its range at the end of the Pleistocene (10,000 years ago), with a dwarfed race still living on Wrangel Island until about 1700 BC.^[3]

Cave paintings of the woolly mammoth have been found in caves in France and Spain.

1. ↑ "Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre - Woolly Mammoth". www.beringia.com. Archived from the original on 2009-04-03. Retrieved 2009-03-26.
2. ↑ Lister A.M.; Sher A.V.; Van Essen H.; Wei G. 2005. The pattern and process of mammoth evolution in Eurasia. Quaternary International. 126–128: 49–64. [1]
3. ↑ Nowak, Ronald M. (1999). Walker's Mammals of the World. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801857899.