Mammoths ... They seem so close and distant to us at the same time, every person knows how they looked, but not one of the people living on the planet saw these creatures live. We can only roughly imagine how tall and weight the animal was, what a mammoth tooth looks like, how much food he needed per day. Mammoths are associated with many Yakut legends and scientific hypotheses. Let’s try to find out what is true from the abundance of information.
Who is a mammoth?
Under the word "mammoth" the average person understands the long-extinct animal of the elephant family, covered with wool and having gigantic dimensions. According to scientists, the last mammoths died out on our planet more than ten thousand years ago, but in reality it is not so simple.
To date, paleontologists have found and described more than eleven types of mammoths. Moreover, not all of them were covered with a thick layer of wool, the most famous are the tundra and woolly mammoths. It is their remains that are found in large numbers on the territory of Yakutia.
Legends of Mammoths
From time immemorial, northern peoples have found strange bones of enormous size sticking out of the ground. They caused sacred horror among ordinary people and tried to avoid them. The Yakuts believed that a huge beast lives under the ground, which dies from sunlight. Therefore, to see a mammoth's tooth or its tusk was considered an omen of death and future terrible events.
The very name of an extinct animal came precisely from the language of the northern peoples. Translated, the word "mammoth" means "earthen horns." This is exactly what the first explorers of the North heard when they asked about the origin of strange bones sticking out of the ground. Since then, fossil elephants began to be called mammoths.
What did the mammoth look like?
The appearance of a mammoth can only be reconstructed from the remains found in permafrost. Most often, scientists get fragmented parts of the skeleton, in some cases covered with wool. But sometimes almost perfectly preserved mammoth bodies appear on the surface of the earth, by which one can reliably judge the appearance of these majestic animals.
Most mammoths weighed more than twelve tons and reached a height of about six meters, which significantly exceeds the size of modern African elephants. The body of the mammoth was covered with wool, depending on the habitat, it had a different degree of density. Curved tusks helped mammoths to rake snow and get food that the animal needed in large quantities. Scientists have found that for normal life, especially in the cold winter period, the mammoth had to eat more than one ton of plant food per day. Mammoth molar was able to grind any plant food. Modern science claims that the structure of the teeth would allow the animal to feed on even coniferous trees.
How long have mammoths become extinct?
For a long time it was believed that mammoths disappeared from the face of the Earth about ten thousand years ago, it is this period that dates all the finds of skeletons of a mammoth in Yakutia and Alaska. But not so long ago, a group of scientists conducting surveys on Wrangel Island found the remains of animals similar to tundra mammoths, but much smaller. For example, the tooth of a woolly mammoth weighs more than ten kilograms, but for a found specimen it barely reached two kilograms. As it turned out, scientists were lucky enough to stumble upon a dwarf variety of mammoths, which had a height of no more than two meters. Their weight did not exceed two tons, in all other respects they corresponded to the remains of tundra mammoths previously found in permafrost.
Scientists were surprised not even by their size, but by the age of death. All found animals died no earlier than three thousand seven hundred years ago. That is, it is safe to say that mammoths did not die out at the dawn of humanity, but much later. But the reason for their mass extinction still causes a lot of scientific debate.
How many teeth does a mammoth have?
Despite their huge size, mammoths had only four molars, which helped them grind plant foods. Surprisingly, throughout the life of the mammoth there were six tooth changes. Three times his molar molars changed and three times permanent. The change was quite unusual - the new mammoth tooth gradually replaced the old one, and at certain intervals, the mammoth could have six, or even seven teeth in the jaw at the same time. In addition to molars, the mammoth had two curved tusks.
The old animal grind off the last pair of teeth completely, after which the mammoth died of hunger. Most often, for this purpose, he left the pack and found a secluded place. Now such places are called mammoth cemeteries, and they are a storehouse of information about extinct individuals.
What does a mammoth tooth look like?
Photos of the found teeth of a fossil animal can now be found in many sources. Several photographs can easily recreate their appearance. The mammoth's tooth had a very interesting structure - it looked like a grater, consisting of separate plates completely covered with enamel. Between themselves, the plates were firmly bonded and merged into a single whole. The mammoth's tooth was a hilly surface, allowing to cope with absolutely any food.
Mammoth tusk: is it considered a tooth?
At first, scientists argued for a long time whether to consider a tusk as an animal’s tooth or not. A thorough study of the bodies of mammoths of different ages made it possible to argue that the tusk is a mammoth tooth. A sectional photo of the tusks found confirms this theory. It is now known that the tusk is a modified incisor, and its direct purpose was to find food and, in some cases, tear it out of the ground.
Tusks did not change as often as molars. The mammoth had milk tusks, which fell out with age. But the permanent mammoth raised all his life, they were slightly curved inward, which greatly facilitated the extraction of food.
An adult male tusk could weigh more than one hundred kilograms and grow up to four meters in length. In some cases, tusks broke off, in especially severe cases, an animal with a broken tusk could die.
How can mammoth teeth be used?
Bone carvers consider mammoth teeth an amazing material from which to make things of extraordinary beauty. But getting mammoth tusks is quite difficult, they are of high cost and are rarely of high quality, suitable for carving.
The mammoth tusk has a mesh structure and several shades. The most rare are cream and black colors, they are exported almost immediately. Exporting mammoth tusks is not prohibited by law, so most of the bones found go to China. There they are used for medical purposes as a dietary supplement. The highest quality tusks go to the Chinese bone carvers. The price of a small product from a mammoth tusk can reach several thousand dollars.
Mammoth molars are also very easy to process; pendants and figurines are often made from them. Already processed tooth has a multilayer structure with beautiful color transitions. In one product all shades of beige, black and even orange can be combined, so they are all unique. Many products from mammoth teeth are sold at specially organized exhibitions and auctions.
It is not known how many more mammoths are hiding in the permafrost of Siberia. Indeed, annually thaws several large bodies suitable for study. Perhaps someday scientists will be able to fulfill their dream and clone a mammoth, then each person will be able to get to know these amazing giants of antiquity better.