When and where did the last mammoths live? 50 interesting and curious facts about mammoths. Epidemic hypothesis
During the ice age, very unusual species of animals lived in Siberia. Many of them are no longer on Earth. The largest of them was the mammoth. The largest individuals reached 4-4.5 meters in height, and their tusks up to 3.5 meters long weighed 110-130 kilograms. Fossil remains of mammoths were found in the northern regions of Europe, Asia, America and a little to the south - at the latitude of the Caspian Sea and Lake Baikal. The death and burial of mammoths occurred 44-26 thousand years ago, as evidenced by radiocarbon dating and the results of palynological analysis of numerous burials of their remains.
A truly inexhaustible "warehouse" of mammoth bones is Siberia. Giant Mammoth Cemetery - New Siberian Islands. In the last century, from 8 to 20 tons of elephant tusks were mined there annually. According to old commercial reports, before the First World War, the export of tusks from North-Eastern Siberia was 32 tons per year, which corresponds to about 220 pairs of tusks.
It is believed that over 200 years, tusks from about 50 thousand mammoths were taken out of Siberia. A kilogram of a good tusk goes abroad for $100; For a bare mammoth skeleton, Japanese firms are now offering from 150 to 300 thousand dollars. The Magadan baby mammoth, when sent to a trade show in London in 1979, was insured for 10 million rubles. In a scientific sense, he had no price at all ...
In 1914, on Bolshoi Lyakhovsky Island (Novosibirsk Islands), industrialist Konstantin Vollosovich dug up a whole, well-preserved skeleton of a mammoth. He offered the Russian Academy of Sciences to buy the find from him. He was refused, referring (as always) to lack of money: an expedition to find another mammoth had just been paid.
Count Stenbock-Fermor paid Vollosovich's expenses and donated his acquisition to France. For a whole skeleton and four feet in leather and meat, pieces of the skin, the donor received the Order of the Legion of Honor. Thus, the only well-preserved mammoth exhibit appeared outside of Russia.
Since the remains of mammoths are in giant natural refrigerators - in the layers of the so-called permafrost, they have come down to us in good condition. Scientists do not deal with individual fossils or several bones of skeletons, but can even study the blood, muscles, hair of these animals and also determine what they ate. The most famous specimen has a stomach and a mouth full of grass and branches! They say that in Siberia there are still surviving individuals of woolly elephants ...
The unanimous opinion of experts is as follows: in reality, thousands of living individuals are needed to preserve the population. They would not go unnoticed… However, there are other reports.
There is a legend that in 1581 the warriors of the famous conqueror of Siberia Yermak saw huge hairy elephants in the dense taiga. Experts are still at a loss: who did the glorious vigilantes see? After all, ordinary elephants were already known in those days: they were found at the courts of governors and in the royal menagerie. Since then, the legend of living mammoths has lived ...
In 1962, a Yakut hunter told geologist Vladimir Pushkarev that before the revolution, hunters had repeatedly seen huge hairy animals “with a big nose and fangs.” Ten years ago, this hunter himself discovered traces unknown to him "the size of a basin." There is a story of two Russian hunters who in 1920 met the footprints of a giant beast at the edge of the forest. This happened between the Chistaya and Tasa rivers (the area between the Ob and the Yenisei). Oval in shape, the footprints were about 70 cm long and about 40 cm wide. The creature placed its front legs four meters from its hind legs.
The stunned hunters followed the tracks and a few days later they met two monsters. They followed the giants from a distance of about three hundred meters. The animals had curved white tusks, brown coloration, and long hair. A sort of elephants in fur coats. They moved slowly. One of the last press reports that Russian geologists saw live mammoths in Siberia appeared in 1978. “It was the summer of 1978,” recalls the foreman of the miners S. I. Belyaev, “our artel was washing gold on one of the nameless tributaries of the Indigirka River. At the height of the season, an interesting incident occurred. In the predawn hour, when the sun had not yet risen, a dull clatter was suddenly heard near the parking lot. The dream of prospectors is a bit. Jumping to their feet, they stared at each other in surprise with a mute question: “What is this?” As if in response, a splash of water was heard from the river. We, seizing our guns, began to stealthily make our way in that direction. As we rounded the rocky outcropping, an incredible scene presented itself to our eyes. In the shallow waters of the river there were about a dozen God knows where the mammoths came from. Huge, shaggy animals slowly drank the cold water. For about half an hour we looked at these fabulous giants as if spellbound. And those, having quenched their thirst, decorously, one after another, went deep into the forest thicket ... ".
Suddenly, by some miracle, these ancient animals, despite everything, in hidden deserted places, are still alive to this day?
“A mammoth by its liking is a meek and peaceful animal, and affectionate towards people. When meeting with a person, the mammoth not only does not attack him, but even clings and fawns over the person ”(from the notes of the Tobolsk local historian P. Gorodtsov, XIX century).
Among the animals that have disappeared before the eyes of man, the mammoth occupies a special place. And the point here is not that this is the largest land mammal that people have encountered. It is still not completely clear why this Siberian giant died so unexpectedly. Scientists do not hesitate to classify the mammoth as a long-extinct animal. And it's easy to understand them. None of the biologists has yet managed to bring back the skin of a “freshly slaughtered” animal from the northern expeditions. Therefore, it does not exist. For scientists, the only question is, as a result of what cataclysms did this huge northern elephant disappear from the face of the earth, roaming the vast expanses of Siberia 10-15 thousand years ago?
If you look through the old history books, you can find out that, it turns out, the people of the Stone Age became the perpetrators of the extinction of this giant. At one time, a hypothesis was spread about the amazing dexterity of primitive hunters, who specialized exclusively in eating mammoths. They drove this powerful beast into traps and ruthlessly destroyed it.
The proof of this assumption was the fact that mammoth bones were found in almost all ancient sites. Sometimes they even dug up the huts of ancient people, made from the skulls and tusks of the poor fellow. True, even looking at the magnificent fresco on the wall of the Historical Museum, depicting the ease with which northern elephants clog with large stones, one can hardly believe in the luck of such a hunt. But at the end of the twentieth century, the ancient hunters were rehabilitated. This was done by academician Nikolai Shilo. He put forward a theory explaining the death of not only mammoths, but also other inhabitants of the North: the Arctic yak, saiga and woolly rhinoceros. 10,000 years ago, North America and most of Eurasia were a single continent, welded together by a layer of floating ice, covered by so-called loess - dust particles. Under a cloudless sky and a never-setting sun, the loess was completely covered with thick grass. Severe winters with little snow did not prevent mammoths from getting frozen grass in large quantities, and long thick hair, thick undercoat and fat reserves helped them cope even with severe frosts.
But now the climate has changed - it has become more humid. The mainland on floating ice disappeared. The thin crust of loess was washed away by summer rains, and the outskirts of Siberia turned from northern steppes into swampy marshy tundra. Mammoths turned out to be not adapted to the humid climate: they fell into swamps, their warm undercoat got wet in the rain, a thick layer of snow that fell in winter did not allow access to the meager tundra vegetation. Therefore, mammoths simply physically could not live up to our time.
But here's what's weird. As if to spite scientists, fresh remains of mammoths continue to be found in Siberia.
In 1977, a perfectly preserved seven-month-old mammoth was discovered on the Krigili River. A little later, in the Magadan region, they found the Enmynville mammoth, more precisely, its one hind leg. But what was that foot! It was remarkable for its amazing freshness and did not retain a trace of decay. These remains allowed scientists L. Gorbachev and S. Zadalsky from the Institute of Biological Problems of the North to study in detail not only the hairline of the mammoth, but also the structural features of the skin, even the content of sweat and sebaceous glands. And it turned out that mammoths had a powerful hairline, abundantly lubricated with fat, so that climate change could not lead to the complete destruction of these animals.
The change of food also could not be fatal for the "northern elephant". Back in 1901, on the Berezovka River, a tributary of the Kolyma, a mammoth corpse was found, studied in detail by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In the stomach of the animal, scientists found the remains of plants characteristic of modern floodplain meadows of the lower reaches of the Lena River.
New information allows us to take more seriously the cases of people meeting with mammoths. These meetings started a long time ago. Travelers from many countries who visited Muscovy and Siberia, not even suspecting the theories of modern biologists, stubbornly wrote about the existence of mammoths. For example, the Chinese geographer Sima Qian in his historical notes (188-155 BC) writes: "... among the animals there are ... huge wild boars, northern elephants in bristles and northern rhinos." Herberstein, the ambassador of the Austrian Emperor Sigismund, who visited Russia in the middle of the 16th century, wrote in his “Notes on Muscovy”: “In Siberia ... there is a great variety of birds and various animals, such as, for example, sables, martens, beavers, ermines, squirrels ... In addition, the weight. In the same way, polar bears, hares ... "
The Tobolsk local historian P. Gorodtsov tells about the mysterious beast “weight” in the essay “A Trip to the Salym Territory”, published in 1911. It turns out that the Kolyma Khanty were familiar with the strange animal "all". This "monster" was covered with thick, long hair and had horns. Sometimes the "vesi" started such a fuss among themselves that the ice on the lake broke with a terrible roar.
Here is another very interesting piece of evidence. During the famous campaign of Ermak in Siberia in the dense taiga, his soldiers saw huge hairy elephants. Until now, experts are at a loss: who did the vigilantes meet? After all, real elephants were already known in Russia at that time. They were kept not only in the royal menagerie, but also at the courts of some governors.
Now let's turn to another layer of information - to the legends preserved by the locals. The Ob Ugrians, the Siberian Tatars were sure of the existence of the northern giant and described him in detail to P. Gorodtsov exactly as stated in the quotation at the beginning of the article.
This "extinct" giant was also met in the twentieth century. Western Siberia. Small Lake Leusha. After the celebration of Trinity Day, boys and girls returned in wooden boats, an accordion played. And suddenly, 300 meters from them, a huge hairy carcass rises from the water. One of the men shouted: "Mammoth!" The boats huddled together, and people watched with fear as the three-meter carcass that appeared above the water swayed on the waves for several moments. Then the hairy body dived and disappeared into the abyss.
There are many such testimonies. For example, Maya Bykova, a well-known researcher of extinct animals, spoke about a pilot who saw a mammoth in Yakutia in the 1940s. Moreover, the latter also plunged into the water and sailed away along the lake surface.
Not only in Siberia you can meet a mammoth. In 1899, an article about a meeting with a mammoth in Alaska was published in the American magazine "McClures Magazine". When its author, H. Tukman, traveled in 1890 along the St. Michael and Yukon rivers, he lived for a long time in one small Indian tribe and heard many interesting stories there from the old Indian Joe. One day Joe saw a picture of an elephant in a book. He became excited and said that he met this animal on the Porcupine River. Here in the mountains there was a country that the Indians called Ti-Kai-Koya (the footprint of the devil). Joe and his son went to shoot beavers. After a long journey through the mountains, they came to a vast, tree-covered valley with a large lake in the middle. In two days, the Indians made a raft and crossed a lake as long as a river. It was there that Joe saw a huge animal resembling an elephant: “He poured water on himself from his long nose, and in front of his head stuck out two teeth each ten guns long, bent and sparkling white in the sun. Its wool was black and sparkling and hung on its sides like bunches of weeds on the branches after the flood ... But then it lay down in the water, and the waves that ran through the reeds reached our armpits, such was a splash.
And yet where could such huge animals hide? Let's try to figure it out. The climate in Siberia has changed. You will not find food in the coniferous taiga. Another thing is along river valleys or near lakes. True, rich water meadows are replaced here by impenetrable swamps, and it is most convenient to get close to them by water. And what prevents a mammoth from doing this? Why shouldn't he switch to an amphibian lifestyle? He should be able to swim, and not bad. Here we can rely not only on legends, but also on scientific facts. As you know, the closest relatives of mammoths are elephants. And just recently it turned out that these giants are excellent swimmers. They not only love to swim in shallow water, but also swim several tens of kilometers into the sea!
But if elephants not only love to swim, but also swim many kilometers in the sea, then why shouldn't mammoths be able to do this too? After all, they are the closest relatives of elephants. Who are their distant relatives? What do you think? The famous sea sirens are animals transformed in myths into sweet-voiced female mermaids. They evolved from terrestrial proboscis animals and retained features common to elephants: mammary mammary glands, change of molars throughout life and tusk-like incisors.
It turns out that not only sirens have elephant signs. Elephants also retained some of the properties characteristic of marine animals. More recently, biologists have discovered that they are able to emit infrasounds at a frequency below the sensitivity threshold of the human ear and perceive these sounds. Moreover, the organ of hearing in elephants is the vibrating frontal bones. Only marine animals, such as whales, have such abilities. For land animals, this is a unique property. Probably, in addition to this property, elephants and their relatives, mammoths, retained other qualities that facilitate their transition to an aquatic existence.
And one more argument in favor of the existence of a mammoth in the North. This is a description of the mysterious animals that live in the cold lakes of Siberia. The first to see a strange animal living in the Yakut lake Labynkyr was the geologist Viktor Tverdokhlebov. On July 30, 1953, he was lucky in a way that none of the explorers of the unknown had been lucky for almost half a century. Being on a plateau that rose on the surface of the lake, Victor observed "something" that barely rose above the surface of the water. From the dark gray carcass of the animal, which was swimming towards the shore with heavy throws, large waves diverged in a triangle.
The only question is, what did the geologist see? Most researchers of the unknown are sure that it was one of the varieties of waterfowl lizards that somehow survived to our time in some incomprehensible way and for some reason chose the icy waters of the lake, where reptiles, as they say, physiologically could not live. Recently, the MAI Kosmopoisk group visited the lake. Members of the group saw muddy, rippling footprints on the water. On the shore, ice stalactites were discovered, formed as a result of the runoff of water from a drying animal, one and a half meters wide and five meters long. Imagine for a moment a crocodile with icicles falling from it! Yes, he, the poor fellow, having got into such climatic conditions, would have turned into an ice log in twenty minutes. But here's what's remarkable. In stories about the extraordinary inhabitants of the lakes, a similar description often slips: a long, flexible neck, a body towering above the water. But maybe, in fact, it was not the long neck and torso of a reptile plesiosaur, but a highly raised trunk and a mammoth head behind it?
So, the mammoth, which disappeared ten thousand years ago after another sharp change in climate, may not have disappeared at all, but, as Vladimir Vysotsky sings in one of his songs: "... dived and lay down on the ground." He just wanted to survive. And, of course, he does not at all strive to be “tracked” and let him go for meat.
Abstract of a series of articles
In the last years of the 20th century, a real boom in mammoth science began. If before that the finds of frozen corpses of mammoths in Siberia (there are none in other places) happened once every 20-30 years, now they happen almost every year. Especially for their excavation, conservation and study, the International Mammoth Committee was established in Geneva, with branches in Paris, St. Petersburg and Yakutsk. A series of publications on this topic will help amateurs and scientists to keep abreast of the latest findings.
The cooling that began millions of years ago in the Northern Hemisphere led to a change in the flora and fauna. Huge fodder resources of open spaces contributed to the rapid development and prosperity of deer, roe deer, bison, and their advancement to the north. A new series of cold snaps in the second half of the Pleistocene had a noticeable effect on the species impoverishment of the animal world and the transformation of surviving species into cold-resistant forms. These include the "early" mammoth. Very fast adaptive evolution is a completely unique phenomenon. The reasons for such a rapid adaptability of the inhabitants of these harsh zones to little snow, albeit cold winters, are considered. Mammoths, as well as their "companions", very successfully existed in the steppe, forest-tundra and tundra landscapes. The woolly mammoth, whose homeland is considered to be the north of Siberia, has replaced the steppe. But at the end of the last ice age, mammoths disappeared.
About a million years ago, under the influence of cosmic and terrestrial causes, a cooling began in the Northern Hemisphere. Snow caps grew on the mountain peaks, tongues of glaciers descended into the valleys. Since a large amount of water settled in a crystalline state on the mainland, the coastal level decreased, significant sections of the shelf dried up, and the outlines of the seas and oceans changed. Under the influence of the physical environment, the flora and fauna changed. Growing in the Tertiary period at the latitude of Moscow, Novosibirsk and Yakutsk,
subtropical evergreen forests were replaced by coniferous and deciduous forests. Vast steppes began to appear on the watershed spaces. At the junction of the Pliocene and the Anthropogen, the hipparion fauna, represented by the three-toed ancestors of horses - hipparions, the ancestors of mammoths - mastodons and saber-toothed cats - mahairods, died out. They were replaced by single-toed high-toothed horses, long-bodied elephants with straight tusks - trogontheria and cats of the modern type. Huge fodder resources of open spaces contributed to the rapid development and prosperity of deer, roe deer, antelope, aurochs, bison. Following them, primitive human-like creatures moved north from Africa and South Asia. In general, this Early Pleistocene fauna became the basis for the formation of the next mammoth group.
A new series of coolings in the second half of the Pleistocene was accompanied by further development of glaciation and a decrease in the level of the oceans. Accordingly, in the Northern Hemisphere, there was a noticeable depletion of the species of the animal world and the transformation of the surviving species into cold-resistant forms. These include the "early" mammoth, bactrian camel, long-horned bison, cave lion and cave hyena. During this period, they reached their maximum size and biological flourishing, resembling the modern savannah of equatorial Africa in terms of numbers. Thousands of horses, bison, donkeys grazed in the expanses of Southern Siberia, herds of camels, mammoths, deer passed by, and woolly rhinos were often encountered. During catastrophic spring floods and during crossings, hundreds and thousands of animals perished, forming cemeteries of their bones in the steep bends of the rivers.
Vereshchagin, 2008
How quickly were hairless trogontheria able to turn into woolly mammoths in a climate cooling? An interesting observation on this topic is made by a member of the hydrographic expedition of the Arctic Ocean (1910-1915) N.I. Evgenov:
Evgenov, 2012, p. 252
The last ice age, which began 60-70 thousand years ago (Wurm in Europe, Valdai in Russia), left noticeable traces in the landscape, flora and fauna of the northern half of Eurasia. Late mammoth fauna existed in steppe and tundra-steppe conditions. With the ocean level falling by 100-200 m, the archipelagos of Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, the New Siberian Islands, and Wrangel Island formed one whole with the mainland. The vast frozen tundra steppe zone stretched from Britain to Sakhalin, including the Russian Plain, the Yama Peninsula, Taimyr, Northern Yakutia and Chukotka.
The permafrost of soils limited the existence of coniferous and deciduous forests only along the river valleys and on the southern slopes of the mountains. From the outskirts of the glaciers, the winds carried loess dust deposited among the grassy vegetation. In winter, severe frosts tore the surface of the earth with deep cracks. In the summer, these cracks were filled with water, which, during the next cold snap, froze and formed ice veins that went tens of meters deep. Living conditions were harsh, but with an abundance of grassy food on hard ground, it was possible to live. Moreover, the inhabitants of this harsh zone have long adapted to little snow, albeit cold, winters.
Edoms are the remains of the Upper Pleistocene plain, in the thickness of which there are bones of mammoths. Currently, yedomas are being intensively destroyed under the influence of the Sun, the heat of oxbow lakes that melt ice veins, and rivers that wash away steep coastal cliffs. It is along the coastal cliffs that the yedomas with the baidzherakhs collect mammoth ivory. It is believed that mainly lakes, with their large reserve of heat, reworked the former Pleistocene plain, lowering it by 12-15 meters. After all, 30-60% of the thickness of the yedoma is ice. As a result of thawing, the silty soil flows down from the cliffs, dragging the bones of mammoths and their companions to the bottom of the lakes and forming redeposited deposits. Therefore, lakes are the second most important reservoir of the remains of the mammoth fauna.
Mammoths are extinct elephants, differing in only a few features from modern African and Indian elephants. In origin and morphology, they are closer to the latter. At the same time, numerous attempts by geneticists to find out which of the modern elephants is genetically closest to mammoths led to a curiosity - for some it turned out to be closer to Indian, for others - to African, and for others - completely equidistant. The mistake was that for research, short pieces of mammoth DNA chains were taken, extracted from tissues frozen in permafrost for thousands of years, which at this stage in the development of gene research in systematics is clearly not enough. Modern elephants live mainly in tropical forests and savannahs, less often in mountains and deserts. Unlike them, mammoths were adapted to existence in the steppe, forest-tundra and tundra landscapes, cold and temperate climates.
As already noted, mammoths belong to the genus Mammothus (Brookes, 1828), which includes 4 or 6 species, depending on the opinion of paleontologists-systematists. Mammoths were large in size - the height of the skeleton of adult male mammoths at the most convex point of the spine reaches 450 cm, in woolly 320-265 cm, and in a small species from the California Chanel Islands 200-180 cm. The most ancient representative of the genus was the steppe or trogontherian mammoth - M. trogontherii(Pohlig, 1886). It lived in the early Pleistocene of Eurasia and North America, where it is sometimes called the imperial elephant. The climate of that era (350-450 thousand years ago) was still moderately warm in the middle latitudes, and moderate in the high latitudes. In the extreme Northeast, mixed deciduous forests grew, vast meadow-steppes and tundra-steppes extended, where these animals grazed, having massive, slightly curved tusks, up to four or more meters in size, weighing up to 130 kg. But the ancestor of the trogontherium is considered to be the southern elephant, silt of archidyscodon, whose skeletons are in the museums of Stavropol, Rostov and St. Petersburg.
Steppe mammoths were poorly adapted to the cold, so at the end of the Middle Plestocene in Eurasia, it is replaced by the hero of our book, the woolly mammoth - M. Primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799), and in North America columbian mammoth - M. columbi. At the end of the Pleistocene, the woolly, or, as it is also called, Siberian mammoth, entered America through the Berengia Bridge, where he lived with his Colombian counterpart until extinction.
The famous Russian paleontologist A.V. Sher (Sher, 1974) put forward a hypothesis that the homeland of the woolly mammoth is the north of Siberia, and more precisely, the Northeast, or West Beringia. Based on verified geological data, the scientist showed that the most ancient remains (about 800 thousand years ago) of this species of mammoths are known from the valley of the Kolyma River, from where it subsequently settled in Europe and North America as the Ice Age intensified. So the name "Siberian mammoth" correctly reflects the origin of this species.
Mammoths disappeared at the end of the last ice age or at the beginning of the Holocene. The extinction of mammoths probably occurred gradually and not simultaneously in different parts of their vast range. As the living conditions worsened, the habitat area of the animals narrowed, split into small areas (refugiums). The number of animals decreased, the fertility of females decreased and the mortality of young animals increased. It is very likely that mammoths died out earlier in Europe and somewhat later - in the North-East of Siberia, where natural conditions did not change so sharply. 3-4 thousand years ago, mammoths finally disappeared from the face of the Earth.
The latest absolute dates of the bones of these animals are as follows: the Berelekh "cemetery" - 12.6 thousand years, the Taimyr mammoth - 11.5 (from Taimyr about a dozen dates between 9 and 10 thousand years are known), the Yuribey (Gydan) mammoth - 10, 0 thousand years. In the west of Chukotka, in the river valleys of the western coast of the Chaun Bay, bones were found with an age of 8 thousand years, and on Wrangel Island - 4 thousand years. Here, apparently, was the last population of undersized mammoths, with obvious signs of degradation.
Why did mammoths become extinct? It is very doubtful that failures under the ice during crossings and into ice cracks, hunts of primitive man, acting separately, could lead to the complete disappearance of these giants. After all, mammoths lived in the vast territory of Eurasia and North America. However, the bulk of the animals died out 10-12 thousand years ago. Biologists believe that the process of extinction of a species begins with a decrease in the fertility of the animal, the birth of predominantly males, and a slowdown in the rate of reproduction. Judging by archival data and old photographs from the Yakut fairs, the tusks of males have always predominated in the harvesting of mammoth ivory. Of the dozen skeletons kept in Russian museums, only in Novosibirsk is the skeleton of a mammoth.
The climatic boundary at the end of the last ice age (9-12 thousand years ago) was marked by a series of sharp temperature fluctuations that adversely affected the fauna of the middle and northern latitudes. In place of the cold but dry steppes, marsh-tundra landscapes began to develop with abundant snow and crust phenomena. Under these conditions, specialization to dry cold turned out to be an evolutionary dead end and led to the extinction of not only mammoths, but also many of its companions: hairy rhinoceros, horse, bison, cave lion, musk ox (in Eurasia). Primitive hunters only accelerated this process.
Word to Professor N.K. Vereshchagin:
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In the summer, when thawing, the “mammoth horizon” emits a characteristic putrid smell. The broken bones of mammoths and other animals do not at all bear traces of the activity of primitive hunters here and are not associated with Paleolithic sites. The ice broke them. |
Mammoths perished en masse even where the role of primitive man was negligible. In the tundra and forest-tundra of the Far North of Siberia, rivers open in places ice-bound bone layers stretching for tens of kilometers. These burials, deposits of bones are known under the name of "mammoth horizon". They contain roughly broken bones of mammoths, rhinos, horses, deer, bison, and sometimes whole carcasses of these animals.Vereshchagin, 2008
Ending to be
Additional information to the series of articles
Yuri Burlakov decided to publish this most interesting book here, in the Encyclopedia. The book was written by him in collaboration with Alexei Tikhonov..K. Vereshchagin. Let this book become a monument to him and to the Russian science of mammoths.
Burlakov Yuri Konstantinovich
Therefore, his excellent essays appear on the pages of the Encyclopedia on behalf of the Information Department.
In 1959, Yuri Burlakov entered the Faculty of Geology of Leningrad University, from which he graduated in late 1964 with a degree in geologist-surveyor-prospector. During training and practical training, he took part in expeditions to the Pamirs (1961), Tien Shan (1962 and 1963), Chukotka (1964). According to the distribution, he got into the Upper Indigirskaya expedition of the Yakut Geological Administration (Ust-Nera settlement of the Oymyakonsky district of the YASSR. In 1990-1993 he worked in the newly formed Association of Polar Explorers (in 2002-2012 he was its vice president), in 1994-2002 - in the apparatus of the State Duma of the Russian Federation, assistant to the Deputy Chairman of the Duma A.N. Chilingarova. During this time, he took part in five sea expeditions to the Arctic archipelagos, the Northern Sea Route and the North Pole. From 1991 to 2002, he annually participated in expeditions to the North Pole. In the autumn of 1999, he took part in an experimental flight of a heavy Mi-26 helicopter to the North Pole without refueling. In the winter of 1995/1996 and 2001/2002, he visited Antarctica with the Metelitsa sports team and organized a flight to the South Pole of the An-3 light aircraft.
In 1997-2007, he annually participated in summer searches and excavations for the remains of the mammoth fauna under the auspices of the International Mammoth Committee (1997-2000 - in Taimyr, 2001-2005 - in the north of Yakutia, 2006-2007 - in Yamal). In total for 1956-2007 he chalked up about 30 expeditions. Since 2001, he has been interested in studying the history of exploration and development of the Russian Arctic. In recent years, he has published two books and about fifty articles in collections, magazines and newspapers on historical, geographical and paleontological topics. Participates in the work of the Polar Commission of the Moscow branch of the Russian Geographical Society, the International Mammoth Committee (as a consultant on paleogeography).
Her hobbies include collecting minerals and polar philately. He likes dogs, dark beer and whitefish stroganina.
Tikhonov Alexey Nikolaevich
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Deputy Director for Research at the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg), Head of the Zoological Museum. Works at ZIN since 1982. Total experience - 22 years, scientific experience - 14 years. He has 87 scientific papers, including 4 monographs. Candidate of Biological Sciences. Member of the Triological Society (since 1982), the Paleontological Society (since 1999), the Commission on Recently Extinct Organisms (CXREO) (since 1998). Scientific Secretary of the Mammoth Committee of the St. Petersburg Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1998). Head of international projects: "Lenfauna" (2000-2003), RFBR-INTAS JR97-1532 "Paleogeography and Archeology of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene of Wrangel Island and Chukotka" (1999-2002). |
Coordinator of the international project "Mammuthus" from the Russian side (1999-2004). Participant and leader of several international projects. Since 2002 - Chairman of the International Mammoth Committee. Since 1983 he worked together with N.K. Vereshchagin, behind him - dozens of expeditions to excavate mammoths and other Pleistocene animals, the author of several finds, including.
*****
site is very grateful Valery Igorevich Sements, - only with his editorial and organizational assistance, the series of articles "The World of the Mammoth" could be published on the pages of the Encyclopedia.
Semenets Valery Igorevich
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Born August 23, 1942, Muscovite. In 1966 he graduated from MINHiGP (Moscow Institute of Petrochemical and Gas Industry) named after. THEM. Gubkin. After graduating from the institute, he worked for more than 4 years in the Design Bureau for rodless pumps (for oil production). In 1971 he moved to the All-Russian Research Institute of Drilling Technology, where he worked until 1991. While working at the institute, he took an active part in the development of new screw downhole motors for drilling oil and gas wells. Has several copyright certificates and patents (foreign). In 1991, he headed a company organized with colleagues focused on drilling horizontal wells. The construction of such wells was carried out in many oil regions of Russia. Business trips to various parts of the country left indelible impressions. |
Niramin - Jun 5th, 2016
Elephants and mammoths share a common progenitor, the paleomastodon, which inhabited Africa about 36 million years ago. Perhaps that is why elephants and mammoths have many similarities.
For 5 million years, mammoths lived quietly on many continents, disappearing from the face of the Earth only 10-12 thousand years ago. Their remains are found not only in Eurasia, but also in North and South America.
Elephants, distant relatives of mammoths, are the remains of a large proboscis family that inhabited our planet in the distant past. These huge animals live in Africa, South and Southeast Asia.
Outwardly, African and Indian elephants look very similar. However, the huge representatives of the African shrouds are much larger than their Asian relatives. The maximum weight of an African elephant reaches more than 7 tons, and its height at the withers is about 4 meters. At the same time, an Indian elephant can have a maximum weight of about 5 tons, and up to 3 meters at the withers. The shaggy relatives of modern elephants, mammoths, were much larger. Their growth at the withers reached 5 meters, the huge tusks twisted in the form of a spiral were the same length. With the help of tusks, mammoths were able to resist predators, and thick long wool protected these animals from low temperatures during the Ice Age. Until now, scientists are looking for the cause of the mass extinction of mammoths. Some consider the ancient man guilty, who intensively exterminated these animals, others are inclined to the version of the emergence of a new ice age caused by the fall of a South American meteorite.
Like modern elephants, mammoths ate plant foods. But unlike their modern relatives, mammoths had to eat sparse tundra vegetation. Many paleontologists claim that baby mammoths also ate their parents' droppings to replenish the stomach with bacteria necessary for normal digestion.
Elephants eat more diversely than their long-extinct relatives. As food, they use leaves, branches, shoots, fruits, bark and roots of trees, as well as shrubs.
And if the ancient man used the mammoth as an object of hunting, eating his meat and later dressing his skins, then the locals learned to tame the current elephants and use them as household helpers. This is especially true of Indian elephants, which are easy to train and become attached to their master for a long time.
Mammoths and elephants - see pictures and photos:
Proboscis evolution. 
Photo: African elephant. 
Photo: Indian elephant. 
Mammoth, African elephant and man. 
Mammoth.
Numerous bones of mammoths have been found in the sites of the ancient man of the Stone Age; drawings and sculptures of mammoths made by prehistoric man were also found. In Siberia and Alaska, there are known cases of finding the corpses of mammoths, preserved due to their stay in the thickness of permafrost. The main types of mammoths did not exceed modern elephants in size (at the same time, the North American subspecies mammuthus imperator reached a height of 5 meters and a mass of 12 tons, and dwarf species Mammothus exilis and Mammothus lamarmorae did not exceed 2 meters in height and weighed up to 900 kg), but had a more massive body, shorter legs, long hair and long curved tusks; the latter could serve the mammoth for getting food in winter from under the snow. Mammoth molars with numerous thin dentin-enamel plates were well adapted for chewing coarse plant food.
Mammoth Dima extracted from permafrost
One of the latest, most massive and southernmost burials of mammoths is located on the territory of the Kargatsky district of the Novosibirsk region, in the upper reaches of the Bagan River in the Volchya Griva area. It is estimated that there are at least 1,500 mammoth skeletons here. Some of the bones bear traces of human processing, which allows us to build various hypotheses about the habitation of ancient people in Siberia.
Skeleton
According to the structure of the skeleton, the mammoth bears a significant resemblance to the living Indian elephant, which was somewhat larger, reaching 5.5 m in length and 3.1 m in height. Huge mammoth tusks, up to 4 m in length, weighing up to 100 kg, were inserted into the upper jaw, pushed forward, bent upwards and diverged to the sides.
The molars, which the mammoths had one in each half of the jaw, are somewhat wider than those of the elephant, and are distinguished by a large number and hardness of lamellar enamel boxes filled with dental substance.
Reconstructed appearance of a 5-year-old mammoth
History of study
Map of finds of mammoth bones in Russia
Native American legends about mammoths
1. Asian group, which appeared more than 450 thousand years ago; 2. American group, which appeared about 450 thousand years ago; 3. an intercontinental group that migrated from North America about 300 thousand years agoNotes
Synonyms:See what "Mammoth" is in other dictionaries:
- (from Tat. mamma earth, because the Tungus and Yakuts think that the mammoth burrows underground like a mole). A four-legged fossil similar to an elephant but larger. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910. ... ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language
The sources for the reconstruction of the mythopoetic image of M. are the images of M. (engraved, the oldest of them in the cave of La Madeleine, France; picturesque, sculptural), known throughout the northern zone of Eurasia, China and some adjacent ... ... Encyclopedia of mythology
Mammoth, mamut husband. a fossil animal, partly similar to an elephant, but even larger than it. related to him. Mammoth bone, fossil fangs of it, going to handicrafts. Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary. IN AND. Dal. 1863 1866 ... Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary
- (Mammuthus primigenius), an extinct species of elephant. Known from the 2nd half of the Pleistocene of Eurasia and North. America. In size, it was somewhat larger than the modern. elephants, had a more massive body, shorter legs and tail, long hair and ... ... Biological encyclopedic dictionary
Strong man, big man, closet, mastodon, big man, mammoth Dictionary of Russian synonyms. mammoth n., number of synonyms: 10 tall (36) ... Synonym dictionary
Many prehistoric animals arouse burning curiosity among our contemporaries. Take, for example, mammoths, whose images flash on the pages of zoology textbooks and television screens. Were they the progenitors of the current representatives of the world of fauna, and for what reason did their extinction occur? Answers to these questions excite many to this day. We will try to analyze how a mammoth differs from an elephant.
Definitions
MammothMammoth- an extinct species of mammals belonging to the elephant family and living in the Quaternary period. They were distributed on the territory of modern Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. Numerous bones of these animals have been found in the sites of ancient people. In Alaska and Siberia, there are known cases of the discovery of the corpses of mammoths, preserved due to centuries of stay in the permafrost. Most representatives of the species died out about 10 thousand years ago during the Vistula ice age.
Elephant Elephant- a representative of the family of mammals of the proboscis order. It is the largest land animal. The life expectancy of an elephant is equal to that of a human and reaches an average of 70 years. This is the only representative of the fauna world that cannot jump. Surprisingly, such a large and clumsy animal is able to develop impressive speed when running (about 30 km / h). In addition, elephants are very good swimmers. They can cover distances of tens of kilometers on water. At the same time, animals do not need long sleep - four hours of rest per day is enough for them.
Comparison
Let's start with the fact that the average height of a prehistoric animal was about 2 meters, and the weight reached 900 kg. These indicators are quite comparable with the parameters of modern elephants. However, there were subspecies of mammoths about 4-6 meters tall and weighing up to 12 tons. The body, head and trunk of the animal were covered with dense wool of a light brown or yellowish-brown hue. The magnificently developed sebaceous glands of a mammal increased the thermal insulation properties of its fur. The 8-10 cm subcutaneous fat layer also perfectly protected the beast from the cold. On the large pointed head of a mammoth, huge curved tusks flaunted, the length of which sometimes reached 4 meters. It is believed that they were used not only for reasons of self-defense, but also in order to get food. With their help, animals tore off the bark from trees, dug up food under a thick layer of ice, etc.
Another difference between a mammoth and an elephant is the size of the ears. In extinct animals, they were small (about 30 cm long) and tightly pressed to the head. Whereas the elephant's ears are protruding to the side. Their average length is 180 cm. It is also worth noting that the mammoth's trunk and tail were much shorter than those of an elephant. On the back of a prehistoric animal there was a hump in which fat reserves accumulated. High mammoth teeth with a large number of thin dentin-enamel plates were adapted for chewing coarse plant food. The feet of the animals had a very thick (practically horn-like) sole, up to 50 cm in diameter. The feet of their modern relatives are particularly sensitive. Thanks to the thick “pillows” located on them, they move almost silently.
A more complete answer to the question, what is the difference between a mammoth and an elephant, will help to find a comparative table.
| Mammoth | Elephant |
| extinct animal | Modern representative of the world of fauna |
| The growth of some individuals reached 6 meters, and weight - up to 12 tons. | The average height is about 2 meters, weight reaches 1 ton |
| Body covered with thick hair | Almost no hair on the skin |
| Pointed head, hump on the back | The head is more flattened, the hump is absent |
| Huge curved tusks up to 4 m long | Tusks several times shorter and less curved |
| Small, tight ears | Large protruding ears |
| Short tail and trunk | The trunk reaches the ground, the tail is long enough |
| Thick, almost horn-like soles of the feet | Feet are very sensitive |