The Adams mammoth is the first woolly mammoth skeleton with skin and flesh still attached to be recovered by scientists. The mostly complete skeleton and flesh were discovered in 1799 in northeastern Siberia by Ossip Shumachov, an Evenki hunter [1] and subsequently recovered in 1806 when Russian botanist Mikhail Adams journeyed to the location and collected the remains.
The first published reports of Siberian mammoth remains appeared in Europe in the 1690s. [2] In 1728, Sir Hans Sloane published what can be considered the first comprehensive scientific paper on mammoths in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. [3] Sloane's paper was based on travellers' descriptions and a few scattered bones collected in Siberia and Britain. While he discussed the question of whether or not the mammoth was an elephant, he drew no conclusions. In 1738, Johann Philipp Breyne argued that mammoth fossils represented some kind of elephant, but could not explain why a tropical animal would be found in such a cold area as Siberia; he suggested that they might have been transported there by Noah's flood. [4] Between 1692 and 1806, only four descriptions of frozen mammoths—skeletons with skin and flesh still attached—had been published in Europe. [5] None of the remains of those five were recovered and no complete skeleton recovered during that time. By the end of the century, based on this partial data, Georges Cuvier was able to argue conclusively that the Siberian mammoth was a different species than either of the two known species of elephant. [6] This was the state of affairs when Adams heard about Shumachov's discovery.
Adams had come to Siberia in 1805 as part a scientific team attached to Count Yury Golovkin's unsuccessful diplomatic mission to China. [6] After the failure of the mission, several members of the scientific team stayed on in Siberia to conduct research. While in Yakutsk at the beginning of the summer of 1806, Adams heard from an ivory merchant about the frozen mammoth discovered near the Lena Delta. He hired four Cossacks and sailed down the Lena to its delta on the Arctic Ocean. At the end of June, he arrived in Shumachov's village and, at the end of July, Adams, Scumachov, and ten men from Shumachov's village journeyed to the mammoth's location. [7]
At first, Adams was disappointed to discover that wild animals had eaten most of the organs and flesh of the mammoth (including the trunk). However, he forgot his disappointment after examining the carcass and realizing that what was left would still be, by far, the most complete mammoth ever recovered. All in all, Adams recovered the entire skeleton, minus the tusks, which Shumachov had already sold, and one foreleg; most of the skin, which he described as "of such an extraordinary weight, that ten persons ... moved it with great difficulty;" and nearly forty pounds of hair. During his return voyage he purchased a pair of tusks that he believed were the same tusks that Shumachov had sold.
In St. Petersburg, the task of reassembling the skeleton was given to Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius. Tilesius' task was made easier by the fact that the Kunstkamera, the museum established by Peter the Great, contained the skeleton of an Indian elephant that Tilesius was able to use as a reference. Tilesius had wooden replicas made to replace the missing leg bones. [8] His reconstruction was one of the first attempts at reconstructing the skeleton of an extinct animal. [9] While most of the reconstruction is correct, Tilesius made a glaring error by mounting the tusks on the wrong sides so that they curved outward instead of inward. The error was not corrected until 1899 [10] and the correct placement of mammoth's tusks would still be a matter of debate into the twentieth century. [11]
Adams' account of his journey was published in late 1807 and soon translated into other European languages and circulated throughout Europe and the Americas. Tilesius made a set of etchings of his reconstruction and sent them other naturalists to examine [12] while he worked on a detailed report of the skeleton which was finally published in 1815. [8]
A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus Mammuthus, one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch into the Holocene at about 4,000 years ago, and various species existed in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They were members of the family Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors. Mammoths are more closely related to living Asian elephants than African elephants.
A mastodon is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus Mammut that inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. Mastodons lived in herds and were predominantly forest-dwelling animals. They generally had a browsing diet, distinct from that of the contemporary Columbian mammoth, which tended towards grazing.
The New Siberian Islands are an archipelago in the Extreme North of Russia, to the north of the East Siberian coast between the Laptev Sea and the East Siberian Sea north of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic.
Johann Friedrich Adam, later called Michael Friedrich Adams was a botanist from St. Petersburg, Russia.
The Columbian mammoth or the imperial mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that inhabited the Americas as far north as the Northern United States and as far south as Costa Rica during the Pleistocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. DNA studies show that the Columbian mammoth was a hybrid species between woolly mammoths and another lineage descended from steppe mammoths; the hybridization happened more than 420,000 years ago. The pygmy mammoths of the Channel Islands of California evolved from Columbian mammoths. The closest extant relative of the Columbian and other mammoths is the Asian elephant.
The straight-tusked elephant is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Recovered individuals have reached up to 4–4.2 metres (13.1–13.8 ft) in height, and an estimated 11.3–15 tonnes in weight. The straight-tusked elephant probably lived in small herds, flourishing in interglacial periods, when its range would extend as far north as Great Britain. Isolated tusks are often found while partial or whole skeletons are rare, and there is evidence of predation by early humans. It is the ancestral species of most dwarf elephants that inhabited islands in the Mediterranean.
Mammuthus meridionalis, or the southern mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth native to Europe and Central Asia from the Gelasian stage of the Early Pleistocene, living from 2.5–0.8 mya.
The steppe mammoth is an extinct species of Elephantidae that ranged over most of northern Eurasia during the late Early and Middle Pleistocene, approximately 1.8 million-200,000 years ago. It evolved in Siberia during the Early Pleistocene from Mammuthus meridionalis. It was the first stage in the evolution of the steppe and tundra elephants and the ancestor of the woolly mammoth and Columbian mammoth of the later Pleistocene. Populations of steppe mammoth may have persisted in northern China and Mongolia as late as 33,000 years ago.
Palaeoloxodon cypriotes, the Cyprus dwarf elephant, is an extinct species that inhabited the island of Cyprus during the Late Pleistocene. Remains comprise 44 molars, found in the north of the island, seven molars discovered in the south-east, a single measurable femur and a single tusk among very sparse additional bone and tusk fragments. The molars support derivation from the large straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), that inhabited Europe since 780,000 years ago. The species is presumably derived from the older, larger P. xylophagou from the late Middle Pleistocene which reached the island presumably during a Pleistocene glacial maximum when low sea levels allowed a low probability sea crossing between Cyprus and Asia Minor. During subsequent periods of isolation the population adapted within the evolutionary mechanisms of insular dwarfism, which the available sequence of molar fossils confirms to a certain extent. The fully developed Palaeoloxodon cypriotes weighed not more than 200 kg (440 lb) and had a height of around 1 m (3.28 ft). The species became extinct around 12,000 years ago, around the time humans first colonised Cyprus.
Johann Philipp Breyne FRS, son of Jacob Breyne (1637–97), was a German-Polish botanist, palaeontologist, zoologist and entomologist. He is best known for his work on the Polish cochineal, an insect formerly used in production of red dye. Proposed by Hans Sloane, he was elected, on 21 April 1703, a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the Societas Litteraria
The woolly mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in East Asia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. DNA studies show that the Columbian mammoth was a hybrid between woolly mammoths and another lineage descended from steppe mammoths. The appearance and behaviour of this species are among the best studied of any prehistoric animal because of the discovery of frozen carcasses in Siberia and North America, as well as skeletons, teeth, stomach contents, dung, and depiction from life in prehistoric cave paintings. Mammoth remains had long been known in Asia before they became known to Europeans in the 17th century. The origin of these remains was long a matter of debate, and often explained as being remains of legendary creatures. The mammoth was identified as an extinct species of elephant by Georges Cuvier in 1796.
The Mammoth Site is a museum and paleontological site near Hot Springs, South Dakota, in the Black Hills. It is an active paleontological excavation site at which research and excavations are continuing. The facility encloses a prehistoric sinkhole that formed and was slowly filled with sediments during the Pleistocene era. The sedimentary fill of the sinkhole contains the remains of Pleistocene fauna and flora preserved by entrapment and burial within a sinkhole. As of 2016, the remains of 61 mammoths, including 58 North American Columbian and 3 woolly mammoths had been recovered. Mammoth bones were found at the site in 1974, and a museum and building enclosing the site were established. The museum now contains an extensive collection of mammoth remains.
Daniel Gottlieb Messerschmidt was a German physician, naturalist and geographer and among the first to conduct a scientific exploration of Siberia, which led to the unearthing of the first fossil mammoth.
The Jarkov Mammoth, is a woolly mammoth specimen discovered on the Taymyr Peninsula of Siberia by a nine-year-old boy in 1997. This particular mammoth is estimated to have lived about 20,000 years ago. It is likely to be male and probably died at age 47.
Patrick Blair FRS (ca.1670–1728) was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist and botanist, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The Gray's Inn Lane Hand Axe is a pointed flint hand axe, found buried in gravel under Gray's Inn Lane, London, England, by pioneering archaeologist John Conyers in 1679, and now in the British Museum. The hand axe is a fine example from about 350,000 years ago, in the Lower Paleolithic period, but its main significance lies in the role it and the circumstances of its excavation played in the emerging understanding of early human history.
Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius von Tilenau was a German naturalist and explorer, physician, draftsman and engraver. He was a member of the Order of St. Vladimir and of the Legion of Honour.
Paleontology in Kentucky refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Kentucky.
The Yukagir Mammoth is a frozen adult male woolly mammoth specimen found in the autumn of 2002 in northern Yakutia, Arctic Siberia, Russia, and is considered to be an exceptional discovery. The nickname refers to the Siberian village near where it was found.