Mammoth - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

History of their discovery

The bones of mammoths are known since the end of the 18th century and it is Georges Cuvier which recognized that they were the ancestors of the elephant S. the first frozen specimen is discovered in Siberia in 1799.

Etymology

The word “mammoth” was fixed during the 17th century by Nicolas Witsen, traveller Dutch. Although the exact origin of this term is unknown, it is possible that it comes from a legend of the Iakoutes of Siberia, according to which the defenses of mammoth came from live animals, kinds of Rat S giants. Thus “My” ground would mean, and “drove” the Taupe. Another thesis evokes the Béhémoth, animal monstrous of the Livre of Job, like origin.

Description

Like all Elephantidae, the mammoths were large mammals presenting a bulky head with a Trompe and a massive body, with the members in pillars provided with 5 Doigt S. During its evolution, the size of its Oreille S and its Queue strongly decreased, an admirable anal valve appeared and three layers made it possible to protect it from the cold: a layer of grease of 8 cm, a Skin 2 cm thickness and three types of Hair S, whose last, those which boxed the thermal shocks, could reach one meter length.

The oldest species which one can allot to the mammoth kind are originating in Africa:

Mammuthus will subplanifrons (4 million years) is known only by Molaire S and a defense;
Mammuthus africanus (between 3 and 4 million years) still been the subject of controversies.

Classification and evolution

Starting from this African origin in Eurasia then in America several species develop which to some extent could be contemporary:

Mammuthus gromovi (Garutt and Alexeieva 1965), most primitive of the line in Europe;
Mammuthus meridionalis (Nesti 1825), the mammoth of the south, the Eurasian species oldest (2,6 to less than one million years) which gains the North America 1,5 million years ago;
Mammuthus trongontherii (Pohlig 1885) in Eastern Europe then which extends towards the Western Europe towards -600 000 years;
Mammuthus intermedius (Jourdan 1861), defined in Lyon and ancestor of the following;
Mammuthus primigenius , the Woolly mammoth, in Siberia which appears towards -600 000 years, extends in Western Europe towards -200 000 years then crosses the Bering Strait exondé during the last glaciation and develops in North America;
Mammuthus columbi , the Mammoth of Colomb, in moderated North America, resulting from Mammuthus meridionalis , and which are at the origin of Mammuthus exilis , around -35.000 years, dwarf insular species of the islands of California.

The dates of extinction of the mammoths can be estimated at:

-12.000 years for Mammuthus exilis ;
-10.000 years for Mammuthus columbi and Mammuthus primigenius in North America and for Mammuthus primigenius in Europe;
-3.700 years for the last dwarf forms of Mammuthus primigenius in the island Wrangel in north east of Siberia.

The mammoths undoubtedly disappeared following a fast warming (in approximately 1000 years), which contributed to make disappear the steppe with mammoth, made of grass and shrubs, with the profit of the forests of conifers in the south and of the covered areas of snow in north. The molars of the mammoth are adapted perfectly to the chattering of grass but undoubtedly not to that of the foliages of trees.

Previously, the mammoth had adapted to several successive glaciations and warmings by modifications of its pilosity as well as size and form of its defenses. The responsibility for the man in his disappearance is sometimes advanced, but that is not clearly shown.

Preserved remainders

Remainders of frozen mammoths were discovered in the septentrional parts of the Siberia. However, the popular belief according to which the mammoths have instantaneously cold summers and are preserved thus perfectly is a myth propagated by pseudo-scientists like Immanuel Velikovsky. The good conservation is very rare, and implies that the animal was buried quickly in liquids or semi-fluid such as silt, mud or water which would have then cold.

Several possibilities are possible. Mammoths could be trapped in moving marshes or sands, and die of hunger or cold, or drown. They could pass through the ice in ponds or potholes. One knows that many died in rivers, probably while having been carried by their floods. In the river Berelekh in Iakoutie, in the North-East of the Siberia, more than 9.000 bones of at least 156 various individuals were found, apparently gathered by the current.

To date, thirty-nine preserved bodies were found, although only four are complete. In the majority of the cases, the flesh shows signs of putrefaction before its freezing and its dessication. The stories of frozen mammoths whose flesh was still mangeable after defrosting abound, but the serious sources indicate in fact that the corpses were extremely broken up, and that the odor was if pushing back that only the Chien S accompanying the authors by the discovery had shown interest for the meat.

In addition, of great quantities of Ivoire of mammoths were discovered in Siberia. Defenses of mammoth have been the subject of trade for at least 2.000 years, and are exchanged at ransom price. Güyük, the Mongolian Khan of the S at the 13th century, is known in particular to have had a throne manufactured out of ivory of mammoth.

While being based on a deferred case of crossing between a elephant of Africa and a elephant of Asia, some developed the theory that if the mammoths were still alive today, they could cross with Indian elephants.

That led to the idea that an animal close to a mammoth could be recreated starting from genetic material of frozen mammoth used in combination with that of an Indian elephant. To apply this theory, the scientists hope to find reproductive bodies of mammoth in good state in order to make revive Gamète S.

In addition, in December 2005, a research team German S, Britannique S and American S.A. successful to obtain DNA mitochondrial of mammoth, which made it possible to highlight the close relationship between the mammoth and the Indian elephant. It seems that the African elephants belong to a branch different from the mammoth, from which the line would have separated approximately 6 million years ago, at the time where in addition one attended separation between gorillas, chimpanzees and human beings.

A mammoth baby of sex female, baptized Lyuba, was discovered in Siberia. It is gone back to ten thousands years (the dating with the Carbon-14 should intervene soon). The scientists hope to be able to reconstitute DNA this animal disappeared, in order to it cloner one day. According to Bernard Buigues, Danish researchers of the university Niels Bohr developed a technique to extract and amplify this DNA.

Anatomy and Characteristics

The mammoths are in general characterized by defenses proéminantes (greatest defense ever found measurement nearly 5 meters), and a woolly system thick (hairs six times thicker than a human hair), sign of a cold adaptation. Thus, the mammoths used their long defenses to excavate in snow grasses with brouter. The head with the lengthened characteristic and in the shape of dome sheltered very developed Sinus, thus allowing the treatment of a great quantity of cold air.

Mammoths and the man

There exist many indication of coexistence between the two species:

presence of tools or works of art carried out at the expense of bones of mammoths;
pictorial representations on the walls of certain caves, in particular with Rouffignac or Pech Merle;
carved representations of which a specimen engraved in a defense, presented for the first time to the World Fair of Paris in 1867.

Mammoths and Cryptozoologie

The noise sometimes ran that the mammoth would not be really extinct and that small isolated herds would survive in the Toundra of the northern hemisphere, vast and little populated. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, according to Bengt Sjögren (1962), of the rumors persisted on the survival of mammoths at the fine bottom of Alaska. In October 1899, certain Henry Tukeman would have told in detail how it had killed a mammoth in Alaska and had then given the specimen to the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, D.C. But the museum denied the business, which proved to be a Canular. Sjögren (1962) believes that the myth started when American biologist C.H. Townsend, at the time of a voyage in Alaska, saw Eskimos exchanging gigantic defenses, that he asked whether mammoths to them always lived in Alaska and that he showed them a drawing of the animal.

To the 19th century, several reports/ratios on “large hairy animals” were transmitted to the Russian authorities by a member of a Siberian tribe, but any forever provided scientific proof. In 1946, a French person in charge working with Vladivostok, Mr. Gallon, ensured that in 1920 it had met a Russian trapper who claimed to have seen giant and hairy “elephants”, alive in the middle of the Taïga. Gallon added that this trapper had not even heard before of the mammoths and that he spoke about the mammoths like live animals in the forest, at one time when one imagined them alive in the Toundra and in snow (Sjögren, 1962). One is also based on a photo catch by the Soviet air forces during the Second world war, but no other photograph came to confirm it.

Bidding

The company of sale to the Enchère S Christie' S allocated a specimen of the Pléistocène 260 000,00 € on April 16th 2007.

Note

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Mythology inuit | Chamboret | Bryophyta (phylogenetic classification) | George observatory | Allan To border