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 Pliocene 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.
The Red "Lady" of Paviland is an Upper Paleolithic partial male skeleton dyed in red ochre and buried in Wales 33,000 BP. The bones were discovered in 1823 by William Buckland in an archaeological dig at Goat's Hole Cave which is a limestone cave between Port Eynon and Rhossili on the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea in south Wales. Buckland believed the skeleton was a Roman era female. Later, William Solace examined Goat's Cave Paviland in 1912. There, Solace found flint arrow heads and tools and correctly concluded that the skeleton was in fact a male hunter-gatherer or warrior during the last Ice Age. Over the last 100 years, more advanced dating procedures have shifted the age from the Mesolithic period to the Palaeolithic era of the last Ice Age.
Gomphotheres are an extinct group of proboscideans related to modern elephants. They were widespread across Afro-Eurasia and North America during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs and dispersed into South America during the Pleistocene as part of the Great American Interchange. Gomphotheres are a paraphyletic group that is ancestral to Elephantidae, which contains modern elephants, as well as Stegodontidae. While most famous forms such as Gomphotherium had long lower jaws with tusks, which is the ancestral condition for the group, some later members developed shortened (brevirostrine) lower jaws with either vestigial or no lower tusks, looking very similar to modern elephants, an example of parallel evolution, which outlasted the long-jawed gomphotheres. By the end of the Early Pleistocene, gomphotheres became extinct in Afro-Eurasia, with the last two genera, Cuvieronius ranging from southern North America to eastern South America, and Notiomastodon having a wide range over most of South America until the end of the Pleistocene around 12,000 years ago, when they became extinct following the arrival of humans.
The pygmy mammoth or Channel Islands mammoth is an extinct species of dwarf elephant native to the northern Channel Islands off the coast of California. It was descended from the Columbian mammoth of mainland North America.
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 the Eurasian mammoths that colonised North America around 1.5 million years ago, that later hybridised with woolly mammoths during the Middle Pleistocene, prior to 420,000 years ago. 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 Cromer Forest Bed is a geological formation in Norfolk, England. It consists of river gravels, estuary and floodplain sediments predominantly clays and muds as well as sands along the coast of northern Norfolk. It is the type locality for the Cromerian Stage of the Pleistocene between 0.8 and 0.5 million years ago. The deposit itself range varies in age from about 2 to 0.5 million years ago. It is about 6 metres thick and is exposed in cliff section near the town of West Runton. For over a century the bed, named after the local town of Cromer, has been famous for its assemblage of fossil mammal remains, containing the diverse remains of numerous taxa, including deer, carnivorans and birds. Although most of the forest bed is now obscured by coastal defence, the Cromer Forest Bed continues to be eroded and is rich in fossils including the skeletal remains of the West Runton Mammoth which was discovered in 1990. The oldest human footprints outside Africa, the Happisburgh footprints as well as handaxes and bison bones with cut marks were also found in layers considered to belong to this deposit near the town of Happisburgh.
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. 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.
West Runton is a village in North Norfolk, England, on the North Sea coast.
Mammuthus meridionalis, or the southern mammoth, is an extinct species of mammoth native to Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene, living from around 2.5 million years ago to 800,000 years ago.
The steppe mammoth is an extinct species of mammoth that ranged over most of northern Eurasia during the Early and Middle Pleistocene, approximately 1.8 million-200,000 years ago. 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. Populations of steppe mammoth may have persisted in northern China and Mongolia as late as 33,000 years ago.
The prehistory of the County of Norfolk, England is broken into specific time periods, these being Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic.
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.
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 and subsequently recovered in 1806 when Russian botanist Mikhail Adams journeyed to the location and collected the remains.
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 East Asia. 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.
Saltville Archaeological Site SV-2 an apparent Pre-Clovis archaeological site located in the Saltville Valley near Saltville, Virginia. The site was excavated from 1992 to 1997 by paleogeographer Jerry N. McDonald of the Virginia Museum of Natural History.
Domebo Canyon, Oklahoma is a Paleo-Indian archaeological site: the site of a mammoth kill in the prairie of southwestern Oklahoma. The Domebo archaeological site features deposits of both incomplete and partially articulated mammoth skeletal remains. Also found at the site were two complete and one fragmentary projectile point, along with three un-worked tool flakes made by prehistoric hunters who lived during the Pleistocene Epoch.
Paleontology in Nebraska refers to paleontological research occurring within or conducted by people from the U.S. state of Nebraska. Nebraska is world-famous as a source of fossils. During the early Paleozoic, Nebraska was covered by a shallow sea that was probably home to creatures like brachiopods, corals, and trilobites. During the Carboniferous, a swampy system of river deltas expanded westward across the state. During the Permian period, the state continued to be mostly dry land. The Triassic and Jurassic are missing from the local rock record, but evidence suggests that during the Cretaceous the state was covered by the Western Interior Seaway, where ammonites, fish, sea turtles, and plesiosaurs swam. The coasts of this sea were home to flowers and dinosaurs. During the early Cenozoic, the sea withdrew and the state was home to mammals like camels and rhinoceros. Ice Age Nebraska was subject to glacial activity and home to creatures like the giant bear Arctodus, horses, mammoths, mastodon, shovel-tusked proboscideans, and Saber-toothed cats. Local Native Americans devised mythical explanations for fossils like attributing them to water monsters killed by their enemies, the thunderbirds. After formally trained scientists began investigating local fossils, major finds like the Agate Springs mammal bone beds occurred. The Pleistocene mammoths Mammuthus primigenius, Mammuthus columbi, and Mammuthus imperator are the Nebraska state fossils.
The Hartley Mammoth Site is a pre-Clovis archaeological and paleontological site in New Mexico. Preserving the butchered remains of two Columbian mammoths, small mammals and fish, the site is notable due to its age, which is significantly older than the currently accepted dates for the settlement of the Americas.
