Prehistoric life
For hundreds of years, mammoth bones found in Europe were thought to be the bones of giants. Around 300 years ago they were identified as belonging to elephants which caused more confusion. Eventually, when it was accepted that animals that differed from those seen today had once existed, the anatomist Georges Cuvier correctly proposed that the bones belonged to an extinct form of elephant. The earliest mammoths recorded date from over four million years ago, and the larger species died out a mere 10,000 years ago. The reasons for their demise remain unclear but may have involved climate change and the arrival of human hunters.
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Teeth tell the story
Teeth help explain the evolutionary journey mammoths made from the African tropics to the arctic.
Adrian Lister from London's Natural History Museum analyses mammoth teeth to understand the evolutionary journey they made from the African tropics to the remote arctic.
Fishing for mammoths
Huge fossilised tusks and and bones are trawled from the bottom of the North Sea.
Huge fossilised tusks and and bones are trawled from the bottom of the North Sea.
Channel crossing
When the North Sea was an ice age tundra, vast herds of animals migrated to the UK.
When the North Sea was an ice age tundra, vast herds of animals migrated to the UK.
Discover what these behaviours are and how different plants and animals use them.
Additional data source: Animal Diversity Web
Discover the other animals and plants that lived during the following geological time periods.
Ice ageLearn more about the other animals and plants that also form these fossils.
Trace fossils
Mammoths have featured it our folklore - learn more our ancestors beliefs
before we understood fossilisation and evolution.
A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, proboscideans commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch (from around 5 million years ago) into the Holocene at about 4,500 years ago in Europe, Asia, and America as far south as Mexico. They were members of the family Elephantidae which contains, along with mammoths, the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors.
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Herbivorous
Nomadic
Social
Cold tolerant
Adapted to running
Viviparous
