Mammoth

Mammoth, a name of Russian origin, applied to Elepltas primigenius, the best known of fossil elephants. It occurs in Pleistocene rocks, and was undoubtedly contemporaneous with man in Europe, as proved by the etched portrait of the animal on a piece of its own tusk found in the cave of La Madelaine in the Dordogne. It had a remarkably wide geographical distribution, being found in Ireland, Scotland, the river-gravels of almost every county of England, Europe as far south as Santander in Spain and as Rome, North America, and especially Siberia. The Liakov and Bear Islands are said to be almost made up of its bones; and in several instances the entire body, with the flesh, the skin, the reddish wool and long hair, and even the eyes, has been found frozen in the soil of the tundras of northern Siberia. The tusks of these fossil elephants were brought regularly to Khiva in the 10th century, and are now taken to China and, via Archangel, to London. They are sometimes nine or ten feet long and remarkably curved. The grinding teeth consist of from 3 to even 30 narrow plates, and in these and other skeletal characters the mafnmoth most nearly resembles the Indian elephant; but its wool and hair were obviously adaptations to a glacial or subglacial climate.