Mammoth of Colomb

The mammoth of Colomb ( Mammuthus columbi ) is a extinct Espèce of the family of the Éléphantidé S. Appelé also “American Mammouth”, it should not be confused with Mammut americanum , the Mastodonte of America). It belongs to the greatest species of elephants having ever existed. The adult males could reach a size with the garrot of four meters and weighed up to 10 tons. They were equipped with little bent defenses being able to reach 4 m length.

Mammuthus columbi would go down from Mammuthus meridionalis arrived to America at the beginning of Pleistocene, there are approximately 1,8 million years. He is thus a cousin close to Mammuthus primigenius , the Woolly mammoth eurasiatic, having also migrated towards North America approximately 50.000 years ago.

Distribution

The mammoth of Colomb lived with the average Pléistocène in vast areas of North America. It disappeared at the end of Pleistocene, there is approximately 10  000 years. He lived more in the south than his contemporary the Woolly mammoth and its remainders are found everywhere between California, Florida and the Big lakes. The places of discovered most septentrional are in what is the South of Canada today, and southernmost in Mexico. Its principal habitat was however the field of the central meadows of the United States.

In Big Bone Lick, a site of discovered on the Ohio river in Kentucky, one found mammoths of Colomb which, with an age of 10  600 years, belong to most recent. A specimen discovered in Nashville in Tennessee had probably only approximately 8  000 years. One frequently found the bones of these animals with human remainders, which indicates that the first immigrants in America made them hunting.

Lifestyle

This mammoth nourished mainly grass and of Carex. If we can speak with such a certainty about its mode about food it is that one found vegetable pollen and other remainders in the fossil molars of the mammoth of Colomb. These analyzes were confirmed by the discovery of excrements in the cave of Bechan which had been used by the mammoth of Colomb there is 15  000 years and over one period of 1  500 years. It accumulated there more than 300 cubic meters of manure of mammoth whose examination showed that it was nourished of grass with 95  %. Probably he ate also the fruits of the Févier of America, of the Oranger of Osages (pomifera will Maclura), of the Coloquinte (Citrullus colocynthus) and of the Chicot of Canada (Gymnocladus dioicus). All these plants give fruits which were too large for the herbivorous animals living in North America before the man did not reintroduce the domestic horses and oxen.

The abundance of discovered of fossil in North America also made it possible to mainly reconstitute the social behavior of these animals. They lived same manner as the species of current elephants, i.e. in matriarcaux groups from two to twenty animals under the direction of an older female. The males joined the herd only at the time of the rut. It was necessary to defend the small ones against the large carnivores, which always did not succeed, as prove it in the cave of Friesenhahn of the hundreds of young mammoths which were beside remainders of Machairodus Homotherium kind.

Taxonomy

The imperial mammoth (Mammuthus imperator) and the mammoth of Jefferson (Mammuthus jeffersoni) are regarded today most of the time as Mammoths of Colomb (Mammuthus columbii).

The dwarf mammoth, a close relative

The dwarf Mammouth, which reaches only one weight of a ton, is more the close relative of the mammoth of Colomb. He lived on Chanel Islands of California and presents the signs of a insular Nanisme.

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