A mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus Mammuthus. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks. They lived from the late Miocene epoch into the Holocene about 4,000 years ago, and various species existed in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. Mammoths are more closely related to living Asian elephants than African elephants.
Proboscidea is a taxonomic order of afrotherian mammals containing one living family (Elephantidae) and several extinct families. First described by J. Illiger in 1811, it encompasses the elephants and their close relatives. Proboscideans include some of the largest known land mammals. The largest land mammal of all time may have been a proboscidean; the elephant Palaeoloxodon namadicus has been estimated to be up to 5.2 m (17.1 ft) at the shoulder and may have weighed up to 22 t, surpassing the paraceratheres, the otherwise largest known land mammals, though this estimate was made based on a single fragmentary femur and is speculative. The largest extant proboscidean is the African bush elephant, with a record of size of 4 m (13.1 ft) at the shoulder and 10.4 t. In addition to their enormous size, later proboscideans are distinguished by tusks and long, muscular trunks, which were less developed or absent in early proboscideans.
The Channel Islands are an eight-island archipelago located within the Southern California Bight in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of California. The four Northern Channel Islands are part of the Transverse Ranges geologic province, and the four Southern Channel Islands are part of the Peninsular Ranges province. Five of the islands are within the Channel Islands National Park, and the waters surrounding these islands make up Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The Nature Conservancy was instrumental in establishing the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
Channel Islands National Park consists of five of the eight Channel Islands off the Pacific coast of the U.S. state of California. Although the islands are close to the shore of the densely populated state, they have been relatively undeveloped. The park covers 249,561 acres (100,994 ha), of which 79,019 acres (31,978 ha) are federal land.
San Miguel Island is the westernmost of California's Channel Islands, located across the Santa Barbara Channel in the Pacific Ocean, within Santa Barbara County, California. San Miguel is the sixth-largest of the eight Channel Islands at 9,325 acres (3,774 ha), including offshore islands and rocks. Prince Island, 700 m (2,300 ft) off the northeastern coast, measures 35 acres (14 ha) in area. The island, at its farthest extent, is 8 miles (13 km) long and 3.7 miles (6.0 km) wide.
Santa Rosae was, before the end of the last ice age, an ancient landmass off the coast of present-day southern California, near Santa Barbara County and Ventura County, of which the northern Channel Islands of California are remnants. At its largest, Santa Rosae was roughly 3-4 times bigger than the northern Channel Islands of today, nearly 125 km long from east to west. Between about 20,000 and 5,000 years ago, Santa Rosae lost about 70% of its land mass to post-glacial rising sea level, leaving behind a vast submerged landscape currently being explored by scientists. San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz, and Anacapa Island comprise the unsubmerged portions of Santa Rosae today. This island was about 5 miles offshore. It broke up between about 11,000 and 9,000 years ago, and the present northern Channel Islands took their shape after the continental ice sheets melted and sea levels rose by about 100 meters.
Arlington Springs Man was a Paleo-Indian whose remains were found in 1959 on Santa Rosa Island, one of the Channel Islands located off the coast of Southern California. He lived about 13,000 years BP, making him possibly the earliest dated person in North America, and an important scientific discovery because it supports the coastal migration theory for the peopling of the Americas. In 2022, after a NAGPRA request, Arlington Springs Man was repatriated to the Santa Ynez Band of the Chumash Indians for reburial according to their native customs at an undisclosed location.
Palaeoloxodon is an extinct genus of elephant. The genus originated in Africa during the Early Pleistocene, and expanded into Eurasia at the beginning of the Middle Pleistocene. The genus contains some of the largest known species of elephants, over 4 metres (13 ft) tall at the shoulders, including the African Palaeoloxodon recki, the European straight-tusked elephant and the South Asian Palaeoloxodon namadicus. P. namadicus has been suggested to be the largest known land mammal by some authors based on extrapolation from fragmentary remains, though these estimates are highly speculative. In contrast, the genus also contains many species of dwarf elephants that evolved via insular dwarfism on islands in the Mediterranean, some only 1 metre (3.3 ft) in height, making them the smallest elephants known. The genus has a long and complex taxonomic history, and at various times, it has been considered to belong to Loxodonta or Elephas, but today is usually considered a valid and separate genus in its own right.
Dwarf elephants are prehistoric members of the order Proboscidea which, through the process of allopatric speciation on islands, evolved much smaller body sizes in comparison with their immediate ancestors. Dwarf elephants are an example of insular dwarfism, the phenomenon whereby large terrestrial vertebrates that colonize islands evolve dwarf forms, a phenomenon attributed to adaptation to resource-poor environments and lack of predation and competition. Some modern populations of Asian elephants have also undergone size reduction on islands to a lesser degree, resulting in populations of pygmy elephants.
The Columbian 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. The Columbian mammoth descended from Eurasian mammoths that colonised North America during the Early Pleistocene around 1.5-1.3 million years ago, and later experienced hybridisation with the woolly mammoth lineage. The Columbian mammoth was among the last mammoth species, and the pygmy mammoths evolved from them on the Channel Islands of California. 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 3.81–4.2 metres (12.5–13.8 ft) in shoulder height, and an estimated 11.3–15 tonnes in weight. Like modern elephants, the straight-tusked elephant lived in herds, flourishing during interglacial periods, when its range would extend as far north as Great Britain. Skeletons found in association with stone tools and wooden spears suggest they were scavenged and hunted by early humans, including Neanderthals. It is the ancestral species of most dwarf elephants that inhabited islands in the Mediterranean.
Mammuthus meridionalis, sometimes called the southern mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth native to Eurasia, including Europe, during the Early Pleistocene, living from around 2.5 million years ago to 800,000 years ago.
Mammuthus trogontherii, sometimes called the steppe mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth that ranged over most of northern Eurasia during the Early and Middle Pleistocene, approximately 1.7 million-200,000 years ago. One of the largest mammoth species, it evolved in East Asia during the Early Pleistocene, around 1.8 million years ago, before migrating into North America around 1.5 million years ago, and into Europe during the Early/Middle Pleistocene transition, around 1 to 0.7 million years ago. It was the ancestor of the woolly mammoth and Columbian mammoth of the later Pleistocene.
Mammuthus lamarmorai is a species of mammoth which lived during the late Middle and Late Pleistocene on the island of Sardinia in the Mediterranean. M. lamarmorai is a dwarf species, as it is estimated to have reached a shoulder height of only 1.4 metres (4.6 ft). It has been found mostly in the fine-grained sediments of the western part of the island.
Palaeoloxodon cypriotes is an extinct species of dwarf elephant 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). 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.
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 the African Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in Northeast Siberia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The Columbian mammoth lived alongside the woolly mammoth in North America, and DNA studies show that the two hybridised with each other.
Mammuthus creticus, or the Cretan dwarf mammoth, is an extinct species of dwarf mammoth endemic to Crete. It is only known from a single locality near Chania, which probably dates to the Early or Middle Pleistocene. With a shoulder height of about 1 metre (3.3 ft) and a weight of about 180 kilograms (400 lb), it was the smallest mammoth that ever existed. Its size reduction was the result of insular dwarfism, where the body size of large mammals on islands reduces as the result of decreased food availability, predation and competition. It was originally described as Elephas creticus by Dorothea Bate in 1907. After DNA research published in 2006, it was proposed to rename Elephas creticus into Mammuthus creticus. Others proposed to rename all the described specimens of larger size under the new subspecies name Elephas antiquus creutzburgi. A 2007 study criticised the results of the 2006 DNA study, showing that the DNA research was likely flawed. However, morphological data supports a placement in Mammuthus. It probably derived from Mammuthus meridionalis, or less likely, Mammuthus rumanus. It was one of only three mammal species native to Crete during the Early Pleistocene and the early Middle Pleistocene, alongside the dwarf hippopotamus Hippopotamus creutzburgi and the giant rat Kritimys.
Bechan Cave is a single-room sandstone rock shelter located at an elevation of 1,280 metres (4,200 ft) along Bowns Canyon Creek, a tributary of the Glen Canyon segment of the Colorado River, in Kane County in southeastern Utah in the United States. The cave is roughly 31 metres (100 ft) wide, 9 metres (30 ft) high and 52 metres (170 ft) deep. It has a single entrance that faces southwest and is well-lit during the daytime.
The Tuqan Man consists of human remains found on San Miguel Island off the coast of California in 2005. The skull and bones of a man buried between 9,800 and 10,200 years ago were exposed by beach erosion on this westernmost of the Channel Islands. The remains were encountered and preserved in 2005 by University of Oregon archaeologists. The remains were dated by way of radiocarbon dating and evaluation of artifacts which had been intentionally buried with him. Analysis of the bones indicated that he was in his forties when he died, and had spent time some distance east of what is now the Santa Barbara coastal region. It was not possible to extract the Tuqan Man's DNA, though increasingly better testing techniques and methods became available and were utilized over the 12 years that passed after his original discovery. The remains return to the island was delayed by resolution of tribal identification and ownership issues contingent on resolution of the precedent-setting Kennewick Man case from Washington State. Under procedures in accordance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), in May, 2018, they were restored to the claiming Chumash tribe, for reburial on the island. The Chumash people had long occupied the island before the arrival of the first European explorers, and the find was given the place name of the island in the Chumash language.
