Pygmy mammoth

The pygmy mammoth, also called the Channel Islands mammoth, Mammuthus exilis, is an extinct dwarf species of mammoth native to the northern Channel Islands off southern California during the Late Pleistocene. It descended from the Columbian mammoth, which is thought to have colonised the islands around 250,000 to 150,000 years ago, and shrank through insular dwarfism to roughly 17 percent of its ancestor's size, standing only 1.72 to 2.02 metres at the shoulder and weighing 760 to 1,350 kilograms. Its remains have been found on Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel islands, which were joined in a single large island when sea level was low. Dental microwear suggests a diet mostly of leaves and twigs. It died out about 13,000 years ago, when the island area shrank, the climate changed and humans arrived, and a nearly complete skeleton was excavated on Santa Rosa Island in 1994.