MAMMOTH (from Russ. mamant fi, mam moth, from Tatar mamma, earth: so called be cause the Yakuts and Tungusians believed that the mammoth burrowed like a mole, since its remains were discovered under ground). The woolly elephant (Elephas primigenius), the best-known and one of the most recently extinct of fossil elephants, closely related to the existing Asiatic elephant. (See ELEPHANT. ) It inhabited Central Europe during Glacial and post-Glacial times. At that time the area of the present North Sea was forested land, and thousands of mammoth teeth and bones have been dredged from the sea by fishermen. It may have orig inated thereabout and moved eastward. for re mains have been found throughout Asia: and it passed on by the then-existing land connection with Alaska into North America, where it spread over the continent as far south as the Central United States. A second, rather doubtful, species (Elephas Columbianus) has been named from some large hones found in the Southern States. The distinction between these elephants and the more familiar mastodon (q.v.) must he kept clear: the latter was a very different animal.
Though the enormous bones of these and other fossil elephants, and their almost imperishable teeth, have frequently come to light, ever since the forgotten antiquity when they were hunted by primitive man, and have been the bases of strange tales, theories, and superstitions. little was known about them until the discovery at the close of the eighteenth century of remains en tombed in the ice-cliffs of the Siberian coast, where complete animals have been kept in cold storage for unnumbered thousands of years. These and other remains enable us to reconstruct more exactly than in the case of any other fos silized creature the proportions and aspect of this animal. Though the tradition of the marvel which the bones seemed to our forefathers has given to the word 'mammoth' a sense of some thing huge. this elephant probably did not on the average much exceed in size African elephants of the present day. One of the largest known ex amples—that preserved by the Chicago Academy of Sciences—did not exceed 13 feet in height at the shoulder, and has tusks 9 feet S inches long. African elephant tusks 10 feet inches
long were exhibited in New York in 1900. The largest mammoth tusks ever actually measured, according to Lucas, were two from Alaska, one 12 feet 10 inches long, weighing 190 pounds. and the other 11 feet long, weighing 200 pounds. African elephant tusks of the same size would weigh 20 per cent. more.
In general form and osseous structure the mammoth resembles the Indian elephant. but the skull differs in the narrower summit, nar rower temporal fossa-, and more prolonged bony sheaths supporting the base of the tusks, which were long, comparatively slender, and described a curve both upward and outward. There are great variations in the amount of this curve, from almost straight to a nearly complete spiral, but it is characteristic of the species. Flower says that tusks were doubtless present in both sexes. The molar teeth are peculiar in the great relative breadth of the crown, and the narrowness, close approximation, and thinly enameled walls of their transverse ridges. Outwardly the mam moth differed from any other known elephant in the fact that it was clothed with long hair, and a dense, woolly underfur, in adaptation to the cold climate of its habitat. Compare INIAsTonox.
From the earliest times fossil ivory was de rived from the buried tusks of these elephants. The ancient Chinese worked in it, and even had such ideas about the edibility of the animal's flesh as makes it probable that they knew that carcasses were occasionally found on the Arctic coast. This ivory was known to the Greeks, and the sent as a present by Ilarun al Rashid to Charleu•gne is believed to be a main ti( th's tusk. Arabic writers of the tenth century mention it a, an article of regular Rus sian trade, and ever since that time fossil ivory has come from Siberia at a rate calculated to be not les: than Mt pairs of tusks a year.