Mammoths… They seem to us so close and far at the same time, everyone knows what they looked like, but none of the people living on the planet have seen these creatures live. We only roughly imagine how tall and weight the animal was, what a mammoth's tooth looks like, how much food he needed per day. Many Yakut legends and scientific hypotheses are associated with mammoths. Let's try to figure out which of the abundance of information is true.
Who is a mammoth?
Under the word "mammoth" the average person understands a 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 fact, not everything is so simple.
To date, paleontologists have found and described more than eleven species of mammoths. Moreover, not all of them were covered with a thick layer of wool, the most famous aretundra and woolly mammoths. It is their remains that are found in large numbers on the territory of Yakutia.
Mammoth Legends
Northern peoples from time immemorial found strange huge bones sticking out of the ground. They evoked sacred horror among ordinary people and they tried to bypass them. The Yakuts believed that a huge beast lives underground, which dies from sunlight. Therefore, to see a mammoth tooth or its tusk was considered an omen of death and future terrible events.
The very name of the extinct animal came from the language of the northern peoples. In translation, the word "mammoth" means "earth horns". That is what the first explorers of the North heard when asked about the origin of the strange bones sticking out of the ground. Since then, fossil elephants have been called mammoths.
What did the mammoth look like?
The appearance of a mammoth can only be reconstructed from the remains found in the permafrost. Most often, scientists get fragmentary parts of the skeleton, in some cases covered with wool. But sometimes, almost perfectly preserved bodies of mammoths 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 a woolen cover, depending on the habitat, it had a different degree of density. Curved tusks helpedmammoths to shovel snow and get their own food, which was necessary for the animal 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. The molar tooth of the mammoth was able to grind any plant food. Modern science claims that the structure of the teeth would allow the animal to eat even coniferous trees.
How long ago did mammoths become extinct?
For quite a long time it was believed that mammoths disappeared from the face of the Earth about ten thousand years ago, all the finds of mammoth skeletons in Yakutia and Alaska date back to this period. But not so long ago, a group of scientists conducting research on Wrangel Island discovered 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 in the specimen found, 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 the 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, we can say with confidence that mammoths did not die out at all at the dawn of mankind, but much later. But the reason for their mass extinction still causes a lot of scientific controversy.
How many teeth does a mammoth have?
Despite their huge size, mammoths had only four molars, which helped them grind plant foods. Surprisingly, a mammoth had six teeth changes throughout its life. Three times he changed milk molars and three times permanent. The change took place rather unusually - a new mammoth tooth gradually replaced the old one, and at certain intervals a mammoth could have six or even seven teeth in the jaw at the same time. In addition to the molars, the mammoth had two curved tusks.
The old animal grinded off the last pair of teeth completely, after that the mammoth died of hunger. Most often, for this purpose, he left the pack and found a secluded place. Now these places are called mammoth cemeteries, and they are a mine 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. It is easy to recreate their appearance from several photographs. The mammoth 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 fastened and merged into a single whole. The mammoth's tooth was a bumpy surface that made it possible to cope with absolutely any food.
Mammoth tusk: does it count as a tooth?
At first, scientists argued for a long time whether to consider the tusk as an animal's tooth or not. Careful study of the bodies of mammoths of different agesallowed to assert that the tusk is a mammoth's tooth. A photo of the found tusks in the section confirmed 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, pull it out of the ground.
Tusks were not changed as often as molars. Mammoth had milk tusks that fell out with age. But the permanent mammoth grew all his life, they were slightly curved inward, which greatly facilitated the extraction of food.
In an adult male, the tusk could weigh more than a hundred kilograms and grow up to four meters in length. In some cases, the 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 to be an amazing material from which things of extraordinary beauty can be made. But mammoth tusks are hard to come by, expensive, and rarely carving-quality.
Mammoth tusk has a mesh structure and several shades. The most rare are cream and black colors, they are almost immediately exported. The export of mammoth tusks is not prohibited by law, so most of the bones found end up in China. There they are used for medical purposes as a dietary supplement. The highest quality tusks go to Chinese bone carvers. The price of a small piece of mammoth tusk can reach several thousand dollars.
Mammoth molars also lend themselves wellprocessing, they are often used to make pendants and figurines. The already processed tooth has a multi-layered structure with beautiful color transitions. All shades of beige, black and even orange can be combined in one product, so they are all unique. Many products made 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. After all, several large bodies suitable for study annually thaw. Perhaps someday scientists will be able to fulfill their dream and clone a mammoth, then everyone will be able to get to know these amazing giants of antiquity.
