MAMMOTH, a gigantic prehistoric mammal. The first mammoth discovered was found imbedded in ice in 1799 on the shores of the Lena, by a Tungoosian fisherman named Schumachoff.
W. Boyd Dawkins, treating of the range of the mammoth in time and space. comes to the conclusion that it existed in Great Britain before, during, and after the Glacial period. Its remains are found in France in "enormous abundance"; there it was contemporary with the Cave men of the Pleistocene, as is proved by a but erroneously called quadrupeds (four footed animals). They have red, warm blood, in this respect agreeing with birds, but differing from reptiles, amphibians and fishes. The mouth is concealed by lips and armed with bony and enameled teeth; each ramus of the mandible is composed of a simple piece of bone. The covering is of hair. Normally, there are four limbs, which in some aquatic mem bers of the class are modified into fins.
The toes are generally five. Most of the bones are solid or have cavities filled with marrow, the air cells which aid in imparting lightness to the bones of birds being, as a rule, absent. The bones of the cranium and of the face are immov ably fixed to each other. The cranium is larger than in other vertebrates, the lower jaw consists of only two pieces. The vertebral column may be divided into five regions, the cervical, the dorsal, the lumbar, the sacral, and the caudal ver tebrw. The heart has two auricles and two ventricles. The respiration is by lungs.
spirited engraving of it on a piece of mammoth ivory found in the Cave of La Madeleine, Dordogne; it has been found in nearly every county in England; and, broadly speaking, its range extended "over the whole land of the Northern Hemisphere."