Woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, is an extinct species of mammoth that lived from the Middle Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene. It diverged from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in Siberia, and its closest living relative is the Asian elephant. It was roughly the size of a modern African elephant, with males reaching shoulder heights of about 2.7 to 3.5 metres and weighing between 3.9 and 8.2 tonnes. Well adapted to the cold of the ice ages, it was covered in long guard hairs over a shorter undercoat, with small ears and a short tail to limit frostbite and heat loss, and it had long curved tusks. It ate mainly forbs and grasses on the mammoth steppe that stretched across northern Eurasia and North America. Early humans hunted it for food and used its bones and tusks for art, tools and dwellings. Frozen carcasses found in Siberia and North America make it one of the best studied prehistoric animals.