The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), also called the tundra mammoth, is the most famous of the mammoths, an extinct group within the family Elephantidae. This animal is known from bones and frozen carcasses from northern North America and northern Eurasia with the best preserved carcasses in Siberia.
This mammoth species was first recorded in (possibly 150,000 years old) deposits of the second last glaciation in Eurasia. It disappeared from most of its range at the end of the Pleistocene (10,000 years ago), with a dwarfed version of the race still living on Wrangel Island (a Russian possession near Alaska) until around roughly 1700 BC.
Woolly mammoth in "Before the Beginning"
Woolly mammoth videos were a popular download from the time-viewer.
Woolly mammoth in A Different Flesh
The hairy elephant went extinct everywhere but in North America about 8,000 BC. When Europeans arrived in the New World, they quickly saw the potential for the hairy elephant as a beast of burden. The hairy elephant was used to power the railroads of North America for much of the 18th century, until it was phased out and replaced by the steam engine.
In 1661, Samuel Pepys attended a lecture at Royal Society concerning the recent discovery of the remains of a hairy elephant in Swanscombe, England. This led Pepys to wonder why the beasts had died out in Europe but remained alive in the New World. He concluded that men were better hunters than sims and so had hunted the elephants to extinction while the sims had not. This, in turn, helped Pepys to eventually develop his transformational theory of life.
Woolly mammoth in The Opening of the World
Mammoths were quite important for survival of humans, especially the nomadic Bizogots, as they provided meat, oil and fur. The ancestors of both ethnic groups of the known world - Bizogots and Raumsdalians, were once mammoth-herders.
In fact, Nidaros had once been a mammoth-herding camp by the Hevring Basin. Mammoths were also used for war by the Rulers, something that incensed the Bizogot clans.
See also
- Mastodon, a related extinct elephant.
- Mammyth, a fantasy analog of the mammoth in "The Mammyth".
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