What is mammoth in short paragraph?

Family of mammals

This article is about the family of proboscideans. For the common name, see Elephant

Elephantidae is a family of large, herbivorous proboscidean mammals collectively called elephants and mammoths. These are large terrestrial mammals with a snout modified into a trunk and teeth modified into tusks. Most genera and species in the family are extinct. Only two genera, Loxodonta (African elephants) and Elephas (Asian elephants), are living.

The family was first described by John Edward Gray in 1821,[5] and later assigned to taxonomic ranks within the order Proboscidea. Elephantidae has been revised by various authors to include or exclude other extinct proboscidean genera.

Description

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Elephantids are distinguished from more primitive proboscideans like gomphotheres by their teeth, which have parallel lophs, formed from the merger of the cusps found in the teeth of more primitive proboscideans, which are bound by cement.[6] In later elephantids, these lophs became narrow lamellae,[7] with the number of lophs/lamellae per tooth, as well as the tooth crown height (hypsodonty) increasing over time.[8] Elephantids chew using a proal jaw movement involving a forward stroke of the lower jaws, different from the oblique movement using side to side motion of the jaws in more primitive proboscideans.[9] The most primitive elephantid Stegotetrabelodon had a long lower jaw with lower tusks and retained permanent premolars similar to many gomphotheres, while modern elephantids lack permanent premolars, with the lower jaw being shortened (brevirostrine) and lower tusks being absent.[8]

Classification

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Some authors have suggested to classify the family into two subfamilies, Stegotetrabelodontinae, which is monotypic, only containing Stegotetrabelodon, and Elephantinae, containing all other elephantids.[8] Recent genetic research has indicated that Elephas and Mammuthus are more closely related to each other than to Loxodonta, with Palaeoloxodon closely related to Loxodonta. Palaeoloxodon also appears to have received extensive hybridisation with the African forest elephant, and to a lesser extent with mammoths.[10]

Extinct genera

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• Elephantidae
  • †Stegotetrabelodon (3 species)
  • Subfamily Elephantinae
    • †Primelephas (2 species)
    • Elephas (7+ species)
    • †Stegoloxodon (2 species)
    • Loxodonta (6 species)
    • †Palaeoloxodon (14+ species)
    • †Phanagoroloxodon (1 species)
    • †Mammuthus (10 species)
    • †Stegodibelodon (1 species)
    • †Selenetherium (1 species)

Evolutionary history

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Elephantids are thought to have evolved from gomphotheres, with some authors proposing the most likely ancestors to be African species of the "tetralophodont gomphothere" Tetralophodon.[11] The earliest members of the family, are known from the Late Miocene, around 9–10 million years ago.[12] The modern genera of elephants and mammoths had diverged from each other by the end of the Miocene, around 5 million years ago. Elephantids began to migrate out of Africa during the Pliocene, with mammoths and Elephas arriving in Eurasia around 3–3.8 million years ago.[13] Around 1.5 million years ago, mammoths migrated into North America.[14] At the end of the Early Pleistocene, around 0.8 million years ago, Palaeoloxodon migrated out of Africa, becoming widespread across Eurasia, from Western Europe to Japan.[15] Palaeoloxodon and Mammuthus became extinct during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene, with the last population of mammoths persisting on Wrangel Island until around 4,000 years ago.[16]

See also

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References

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• Elephantidae at Wikimedia Commons
• Elephantidae at Wikispecies

If you stepped outside 20,000 years ago, you’d probably need a winter coat, even in summer. That’s because Earth was experiencing an ice age—a time when sheets of ice covered large parts of North America, Europe, and Asia. It was also a time when humans lived alongside a now-extinct group of elephants called mammoths.

Ancient elephant

One species, called woolly mammoths, roamed the cold tundra of Europe, Asia, and North America from about 300,000 years ago up until about 10,000 years ago. (But the last known group of woolly mammoths survived until about 1650 B.C.—that’s over a thousand years after the Pyramids at Giza were built!)

These animals grazed on plants, using their 15-foot-long tusks to dig under snow for food like shrubs and grasses. Like today’s elephants, woolly mammoths likely gave birth to one calf at a time, and the females and their young roamed in herds of about 15 individuals. Male mammoths would leave the herd at about age 10.

Snow ready

Woolly mammoths were probably about the size of African elephants, around 13 feet tall. But woolly mammoths had much smaller ears, which kept them from losing body heat. They were also covered in two layers of fur—the shaggy outer layer could be 20 inches long and helped them stay toasty in temperatures as low as minus 58°F. Woolly mammoths also had a lump on their back, which scientists think were fat stores that provided energy when food was scarce, sort of like a camel’s hump.

Scientists aren’t sure exactly why woolly mammoths went extinct: Some think that humans hunted too many of them, and others believe that they couldn’t survive Earth’s naturally warming climate. Or, it could’ve been a combination of both.

Dino Road Trip Videos

Anchiornis

Ali and Sean travel back 150 million years to the Jurassic period to get a look at a flying dinosaur called the Anchiornis. Tour guide Simon reveals that this dinosaur actually had feathers!