Scientists in the arctic city of Salekhard inspect the carcass of a baby mammoth found in May in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous district in Russia's north. The carcass, seen in a photo taken on July 2, is considered to be the best preserved specimen of its type, scientists said.
Map: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6284214.stm
Photo: http://www.thestar.com/News/article/234736
A beautiful recreation of two mammoths walking along a snow covered trail.
Photo: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/cavewars/
In 2002 the institute became 170 years old although the history of establishment of collections at the institute and the museum began much earlier, i.e. since the time of Peter the Great, who purchased exhibits for the Kunstkammer, the first Russian museum established by him in 1714. Zoological specimens were added to the Kunstkammer collection after Peter the Great. The first museum catalogue (1742) lists approximately 4000 representatives of mammals, birds, amphibians, fishes, insects and invertebrates, deposited in scientific collections of the Kunstkammer.
Photo of the ZIN: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
The 18th century was the age of great expeditions including the famous academic expeditions of P.S. Pallas in the southern regions of Russia and Siberia. Information obtained in the expeditions provided the basis for many books including the famous monographs of P.S. Pallas (Zoographica Rosso-Asiatica), etc. and material collected in the expeditions was added to the 'natural cabinet' of the Kunskammer.
Extensive material collected during numerous marine and land expeditions of the early 19th century filled the depository of the Kunstkammer and the necessity arose to establish specialized museums, a zoological museum being among those.
The mammoth collection of the ZIN is unmatched. The most unique exhibit of this collection (and, undoubtedly, the most valuable exhibit of the museum) is a stuffed mammoth, the only exhibit of this kind in the world. When excavated, this mammoth was almost intact and retained skin, muscles, and innards. It was found in 1900 at the Berezovka River, a tributary of the Kolyma.
News of the finding reached the Academy of Sciences in April 1901 and in May, an expedition consisting of the zoologist O.F. Gerts, laboratory assistant E.V. Pfitsenmaier, and geologist D.P. Sevast'yanov was sent to excavate the mammoth.
The Berezovka mammoth is mounted in a strange posture: the animal appears to be sitting. It was frozen in this position in the permafrost 45 thousand years ago, when it fell down into a precipice or a crack and died. This finding provided the scientists with valuable information, in particular, on mammoth feeding, as food remains (grass) were revealed between the teeth and in the stomach. The Berezovka mammoth is the emblem of the Zoological Institute.
В кишечнике Шандринского мамонта, были найдены личинки овода (….). Вероятно, этот вид паразита, тесно связанный с мамонтами, вымер вместе с ними.
In the intestines of the Shandrinskogo mammoth, have been found larvae of an insect similar to the botfly. Possibly, this form of the parasite closely connected with mammoths, died out when they did.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007 from a display in the St Petersburg Zoological Museum
A very young mammoth snap frozen and revealed in melting permafrost, with much of its hair intact, though missing its trunk, on display in the St Petersburg Zoological Museum.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
This young mammoth on display in the St Petersburg Zoological Museum appears to have been preserved in a peat bog.
It exhibits the classic black, shiny, flattened form of this method of preservation in anaerobic conditions, seen most often in the very detailed remains of humans preserved in peat bogs in northern Europe.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Mammoth on display in the St Petersburg Zoological Museum.
This is the famous "Adams mammoth" which was very important in the history of the understanding of mammoths and their evolution. See below.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
The identity of the Siberian mammoth was substantially revised in 1796 by George Cuvier. In the first paper he published Cuvier demonstrated—with the assistance of Messerschmidt's drawings—that the Siberian mammoth was distinct from living elephants. It was a different species. It was also extinct. The Siberian mammoth was formally named Elephas primigenius by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1799. Much later, authorities realized that the mammoth was sufficiently distinct to warrant its own genus. It's now known as Mammuthus primigenius.
In the same year that Blumenbach named the mammoth, a hunter discovered one entombed in permafrost in a bank of the Lena River, Siberia. Over the next few years thawing freed enough of the carcass from the ice that the hunter was able to remove the tusks, which he sold to a merchant in the city of Yakust. In 1806 Mikhail (Michael) Adams, a Scottish botanist attached to the Russian Academy of Science, received word of the mammoth while traveling through Yakust. When his party reached it, they found a badly decomposed carcass. However, it still had considerable patches of skin and hair and most of the skeleton was intact. The find was transported to St. Petersburg, where it was mounted at the Zoological Institute. It became known as the Adams mammoth.
The dense hair of the woolly mammoth demonstrated that it was suited for the frigid Siberian climate. It was no longer necessary to explain the presence of tropical elephants in the Far North. Georges Cuvier, who had earlier proclaimed the mammoth to be a lost (extinct) species, argued that its entombment in ice was evidence for a sudden catastrophe.
Text adapted from: http://www.ansp.org/museum/jefferson/otherFossils/mammuthus.php
Photo: The Adam's Mammoth (after Tilesius, 1815), from the website http://www.ansp.org/museum/jefferson/otherFossils/mammuthus.php
Скелет Ленского мамонта
Целый труп мамонта был обнаружен в 1799 году охотником О. Шумаковым в береговом обрыве дельты реки Лены, на полуострове Быковском. В 1803 году туша полностью вытаяла из мерзлоты и оказалась на берегу; когда в 1806 году адъютант Академии Наук М.И. Адамс, находящийся в то время в Якутске, добрался до места находки, в сохранности оказался только скелет с остатками кожи и мускульных тканей. Уцелевшие останки были доставлены в Санкт- Петербург, где скелет был смонтирован и выставлен сначала в Кунсткамере, а затем в зоологическом музее Императорской Академии наук. Это был первый скелет мамонта, попавший в руки ученых. Абсолютный возраст находки, по данным радиоуглеродного анализа составляет 35 800 лет.
Mammoth on display in the St Petersburg Zoological Museum.
The small white plaster cast shows a model of the southern elephant, Archidiscodon meridionalis, the ancestor of the steppe mammoth and Mammuthus primigenius.
Map of the last known areas inhabited by mammoths on the mainland and Wrangel Island, where they survived until 3 200 years ago.
On the boundary of the Pleistocene and Holocene (less than 10 000 years ago) the sea flooded most of the Arctic shelf. The range of mammoths was reduced and were represented in few areas except for small isolated sites in the northeast of Siberia. During the next 4 000 years on Wrangel island, which was separated from the continent 9 000 years ago, a small stable population existed. These Mammoths lived in extremely adverse conditions; animals became small in stature due to lack of food during early development. Among the bones and teeth of the mammoths found on the island, the percentage of remains demonstrating the development of various illnesses is rather high.
At the same time, use by adult animals of a wider set of fodder plants and the absence of predators led to the majority living to a ripe old age.
The reason for the final disappearance of mammoths on the island is not clear; probably it did not occur without the help of those humans who appeared on the island about 3 200 years ago.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007, from an exhibit at the ZIN, St Petersburg.
Mammoth information from the St Petersburg Zoological Museum.
Слоновые
Слоновые (семейство Elephantidae) ведут свое начало от бугорчато-зубых мастодонтов (семейство Gomphotheriiae) появились в Африке миоцене ( 5,5 млн. лет назад). В начале плиоцена ( 4,5-4 млн. лет назад) имело место разделение единого ствола слоновых на четыре ветви – подсемейства: локсодонтины ( Loxodontinae), палеолксодонтины (Palaeoloxodontinae), собственно слоны (Elephantinae) и мамонты (Mammuthinae).
В середине плиоцена слоновые, кроме локсодонтин, проникают из Африки в Евразию, где получают широкое распространение; мамонты продвигаются еще дальше, достигая Северной Америки.
В конце плейстоцена-голоцена (12-10 тысяч лет назад) ареал слоновых резко сокращается. В настоящее время эти животные сохраняются лишь в Африке и Юго-Восточной Азии.
Archidiscodon meridionalis
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Череп южного слона, Archidiscodon meridionalis
Найден в окрестностях станицы Александрия, Ставропольского края в 1964 году. Передан в дар Зоологическому музею Пятигорским краеведческим мудзеем в 1965 году.
Skull of the southern elephant, Archidiscodon meridionalis
This skull was found in the vicinity of Alexandria village, Stavropol Territory in 1964. It was transferred as a gift from the Pyatigorsk museum of local lore in 1965.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Map: Adapted from http://encarta.msn.com/
Archidiscodon trogontherii
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Mammuthus primigenius, the wooly mammoth.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Mammuthus primigenius, the wooly mammoth.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
The African Elephant Loxodonta afrikana, the largest living land animal.
It may weigh up to 6 tons and measure 4 meters over the shoulder. The skin is of a greyish brown hue, very thick and with many deep folds. The three different subspecies are verty different in size and appearance. The Bush Elephant (Loxodonta afrikana africana) is the largest, weighing up to 6 tons, measuring up to 4 meters over the shoulder. It has large broad ears with a sharply pointed lower lobe. The tusks are longer and are usually curved forwards.
Loxodonta means "sloping teeth".
Text: http://www.limpopo-safaris.com/showpage.php?page=species_eng
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
The Forest Elephant (Loxodonta afrikana cyclotis) is smaller, weighing up to 4 tons, measuring 3 meters over the shoulder. It has smaller rounded ears with less pronounced lappets, and straighter, thinner and shorter tusks, usually projecting downwards. Sometimes, however, the Forest Elephant's tusks are longer than those of the Bush Elephant.
The Pygmy Elephant (Loxodonta afrikana pumilio): Is the smallest of the three, weighing up to 2 tons, measuring 1,8 - 2 meters over the shoulder. It has also smaller, rounder ears. The tusks are thin, very straight and also very short. It is reputed to be the most aggressive of the three. The Pygmy Elephant is only recognised as an individual subspecies by few zoologists. Most are of the opinion that it is an ecological subspecies rather than a different species, having adapted to an unfavourable habitat (confined to the swampy forest of Gabon and Congo), and being therefore of a much smaller size.
Text: http://www.limpopo-safaris.com/showpage.php?page=species_eng
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Protoloxodonta adanrora
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Palaeoloxodon namadicus
This is another name for Elephas namadicus.
Elephas namadicus was a relatively small (7 feet at the shoulders) prehistoric elephant that ranged throughout Pleistocene Asia, from India (where it was first discovered) to Japan, where the indigenous Neolithic cultures hunted that particular subspecies for food. It is a descendant of the Straight-Tusked Elephant.
Some authorities regard it to be a subspecies of Elephas antiquus, the Straight-Tusked Elephant, due to the extreme similarities of the tusks.
Text:Wikipedia
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
The Straight-tusked Elephant (Elephas (Palaeoloxodon) antiquus or Palaeoloxodon antiquus) is an extinct species of elephant closely related to the living Asian Elephant. It inhabited Europe during the Middle and Late Pleistocene (781 000 – 11 550 years before present). Some experts regard the smaller Asian species Elephas namadicus, as a variant or subspecies of this one.
The creature was 3.70 m (12 ft) tall and had long, slightly upward-curving tusks. Elephas antiquus's legs were slightly longer than those of modern elephants. It is suggested that this elephant had an 80 cm long tongue that could be projected a short distance from the mouth to grasp leaves and grasses. With this tongue along with a flexible trunk, straight-tusked elephants could graze or browse on Pleistocene foliage about 8 metres above ground.
Straight-tusked elephants lived in small herds of about 5 to 15 individuals. They preferred warm conditions and flourished in the interglacial periods during the Ice Ages, spreading from continental Europe to Great Britain during the warmer periods. It is assumed that they preferred wooded environments. During colder periods the species migrated south. It became extinct in Britain by the beginning of the last ice age, about 115,000 years ago. Eventually it was replaced by the mammoth
Text:Wikipedia
Photo: Wikipedia - photo taken at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris in August 2006 by "LadyofHats".
The photographer has graciously released it into the public domain.
The sculptor appears to have signed as M.F. Linsch, and the sculpture is at 1/8 scale.
Palaeoloxodon falconeri
This is a dwarf elephant found as fossils on Sicily and Malta, dwarfed by the well documented process of the diminution of size of large animals confined to islands.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Palaeoloxodon melitensis
This is a dwarf elephant found as fossils on Sardinia, Sicily and Malta, dwarfed by the well documented process of the diminution of size of large animals confined to islands.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Palaeoloxodon antiguus
This is a mastodon, the remains of which were found in the area of Ambelia, Greece, dated to around 200 000 years.
Text: www.spring.net/yapp-bin/public/read/Geo/7
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Omoloxodon recki
In 1955 Deraniyagala proposed the name Omoloxodon for Elephas recki of East Africa. This was based on several cranial characters.
Elephas recki is an extinct species of African elephant. At up to 15 feet (4.5 metres) in shoulder height, it was one of the largest elephant species to have ever lived. It is believed that E. recki ranged throughout Africa between 3.5 and 1 million years ago. The Asian Elephant is the only extant member of the genus. E. recki was a successful grass eating elephant that lived throughout the Pliocene and the Pleistocene until it was pushed to extinction in competition with members of the genus Loxodonta, the African elephants of today.
Primelephas gomphotheroides
Primelephas means first elephant, and is thought to be the ancestor of all elephants, and split up into three lineages, Loxodonta, Elephas, and Mammuthus.
The animal lived 5 million years ago in dense forests in Africa. It had tusks in both the upper and the lower jaw, it had an increased number of molar ridges, capable of grinding up rough vegetation, and had a longer trunk than Gomphoterium, an elephant like animal with fossil examples dating to 25 Million years ago.
Text: Adapted from www.elephant.se/primelephas.php?open=Extinct%20Proboscidea
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Elephas maximus
The Asian or Asiatic Elephant (Elephas maximus) is one of the three living species of elephant, and the only living species of the genus Elephas. The species is found primarily in large parts of Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Indochina and parts of Indonesia. It is considered endangered, with between 25 600 and 32 750 left in the wild.
It is smaller than its African relatives; the easiest way to distinguish the two is that the Asian elephant has smaller ears. The Asian Elephant tends to grow to around two to four metres in height and 3 000 – 5 000 kilograms in weight.
The Asian Elephant has other differences from its African relatives, including a more arched back than the African, one semi-prehensile "finger" at the tip of its trunk as opposed to two, four nails on each hind foot instead of three, and 19 pairs of ribs instead of 21. Also, unlike the African elephant, the female Asian Elephant usually lacks tusks; if tusks — in that case called "tushes" — are present, they are barely visible, and only seen when the female opens her mouth. Some males may also lack tusks; these individuals are called "makhnas", and are especially common among the Sri Lankan elephant population. Furthermore, the forehead has two hemispherical bulges, unlike the flat front of the skull of the African elephant.
Text: adapted from Wikipedia
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Platelephas platycephalus or Elephas platycephalus
The name means "flat headed" but there seems very little information on the net about this species, apart from the fact that it is extinct. I did find a pdf from 1929 with some information, see below.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Elephas platycephalus
Subfamily: Elephantinae
Elephas platycephalus, new species
TYPE.-Amer. Mus. 19818. Cranium with M3 of both sides partly exposed.
Locality - Near Siswan, bed of Amilee Creek, Simla Hills, India.
Horizon - Found in separate mass of consolidated gravel which had apparently
been washed down from an original Boulder Conglomerate bed into a shallow region
bordering Amilee Creek. While not found in situ, it would seem to be of the same
Lower Pleistocene age as the Boulder Conglomerate formation above. Barnum Brown
Collection of 1922.
Hypselephas hysudricus
There appears to be an error in transcription on the sign of this model, which is labelled Hypselephas hycudricus
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Hypselephas hysudricus
(This pdf is from "Current Science" from the September 20, 1968 issue, Vol 37, published in the archives of the Indian Academy of Sciences. My thanks to them for making this information available. I have OCRd and proofed the original image into standard html to make it more readily accessible to search engines and save space. The original may be found as a link at www.ias.ac.in/j_archive/currsci/37/vol37contents.html - Don)
Current Science
On the Occurrence of Hypselephas Hysudricus in the Pleistocene: Deposits of Tirunelveli, Madras State.
Published with the kind permission of the Director-General, Geological Survey of India.
K. N. PRASAD
Geological Survey of India, Hyderabad
And
J. A. DANIEL
Zoology Department, V.O.C. College, Tuticorin
The evolutionary history of proboscideans has always been of great interest to Vertebrate Palaeontologists. As pointed out by Osborn they rank next to man in biological importance and far surpass the mechanically inferior man in demonstration of all the main principles of biomechanical aristogenesis and alloimetry. The material under description, a partial skull was recovered from Ayyanidipu (8° 45' N 78°7' E) 6.5 kilometres west, on the Tuticorin - Palayamcottah road.
A small patch of late Tertiary sediments of probable Pliocene - Pleistocene age occurs in a series of detached outcrops in the coastal belt of Tirunelveli - Tuticorin. A brief note on the present find was published by Easterson without assigning the material to any specific group. Therefore, a detailed description of the skull has been attempted by the authors.
A few well sections near Sayamalai (9° 5' N 77° 4' E), Tirunelveli District, have also yielded a few vertebrate fossils of Pleistocene age (Tripathi). Critical field studies by one of us (Prasad) of a number of well sections reveal that the tuffaceous kankar bands and the compact sandstones containing the vertebrate fossils are barely five to six metres thick and overlie the Archaeans directly. The occurrence qf Hypselephas hysudricus in this part of the region is of considerable interest as it throws some new light on the distribution of the group Elephantinæ during the Pleistocene times. This is the first record of Hypselephas from the Pleistocene beds other than the Siwaliks of Punjab Himalayas.
Genus Hypselephas Osborn 1936
Genotypic species:
Hypselephas hysudricus Falconer, 1845
The original material described by Falconer from the Siwaliks is from the Lower Pleistocene. He considered Elephas hysudricus as related to E. indicus. Adams believed them to be ancestral to Loxodonta and Elephas. On the other hand, Pohlig considered them as ancestral to Elephas namadicus. However, Osborn regarded them as more closely related to E. indicus although by no means ancestral. Forty-three specimens are known from the Siwalik (Lower Pleistocene) beds of Punjab.
Phanagoroloxodon mammontoides
It is possible that the forests were occupied by Phanagoroloxodon mammonthoides Garutt (Garutt 1957) on the territory of the Sea of Azov at the end of Pliocene and at the beginning of the Pleistocene.
Text: www.cq.rm.cnr.it/elephants2001/pdf/152_156.pdf
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Protelephas planifrons
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Eoelephas ecorensis
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Туркменский слон
Обитал на территории современной Украины и Средней Азии в начале среднего плейстоцена около 1 млн. лет назад. Отличался крупным ( высота до 4.5 м) размерами,
Относительно коротким туловищем, и длинными почти прямыми бивнями. Демонстрируются череп и обломок бедерной кости, найденные в 1943 году вблизи поселка Худай-Даг на юго-западе Туркменистана. Окончательные раскопки проводились экспедицией Академии Наук СССР в 1952 году.
The Turkmen elephant.
This member of the elephant family lived in the territory of modern Ukraine and Central Asia in the beginning of the middle Pleistocene around 1 million years ago.
It had a height at the shoulders of up to 4.5 metres. It had a relatively short trunk, and long almost straight tusks. The skull and a fragment of the femoral bones were found in 1943 near the settlement of Hudaj-Dag in the south west of Turkmenistan.
The final excavation was completed by an expedition of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1952.
Photo: Vladimir Gorodnjanski, 2007
Photo: http://www.modbee.com/ From: NTV, Russian Television Channel -- AP Photo
The frozen carcass of a 10 000-year-old baby mammoth has been unearthed in a remote northern Siberian region, a discovery scientists said Wednesday could help in climate change studies.
The 1.2-metre grey-and-brown carcass, discovered in May by a reindeer herder near the Yuribei River in the Yamal-Nenets region, has its trunk and eyes virtually intact and even some fur remaining, said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Zoological Institute.
The animal's tail and ear appeared to have been bitten off, he said.
"The mammoth is an animal that you look at and you see that there is an entire epoch behind it, a huge time period when climate was changing," he said in comments broadcast Friday.
"And of course when we talk about climate change, we must use the knowledge that we will get from them (mammoths)."
Scientists believe mammoths lived from 4.8 million years ago to around 4 000 years ago. Studies suggest climate change or overkill by human hunters as possible reasons leading to their extinction.
Tikhonov said the mammoth would be sent to an institute in Japan for further study.
Global warming has made it easier for woolly mammoth hunters to hack the animal out of Russia's thawing permafrost. An entire mammoth industry has sprung up around the far eastern frontier town of Yakutsk.
Many examples are simply sold on the black market - and can be seen in Russian souvenir shops, next to unhappy-looking stuffed brown bears.
Lyuba was only about four months old when she died on a full stomach. Ten thousand odd years later she is set to become world famous.
Scientists have hailed the discovery of the baby woolly mammoth, dubbed Lyuba, as one of the finest examples of preserved mammoths ever discovered after it emerged from the melting permafrost in western Siberia.
"There has never been such a find," Pavel Kosintsev, one of the first scientists to see the mammoth, said in a telephone interview from Yekaterinburg.
"The mammoth is an animal that you look at and you see that there is an entire epoch behind it, a huge time period when climate was changing," said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Zoological Institute in televised comments last week.
With her trunk still intact, eyes in place and small tufts of fur still on her skin, Lyuba looks more like a museum fake than a link to life in the Ice Age, though her tail seems to have been nipped off.
One hundred and thirty centimeters long, 90 centimeters high and weighing only 50 kilograms, the mammoth is almost exactly as it was when it died nearly 10,000 years ago, said Kosintsev, deputy head of the Zoological Museum in the Institute of Ecological Plants and Animals.
Photo: http://in.today.reuters.com
"The animal died and immediately was buried in a watery area or a bog. There was no decay. She was located there in a frozen state for several thousand years," said Kosintsev. Lyuba likely reappeared to the world after the river's bank slipped at the end of last year, he said.
Lyuba was found almost two months ago on May 15 by Yury Khudi, a nomadic reindeer tribesman near the Yuribei River in the Yamal-Nenets autonomous region. Khudi, a Nenets, thought it was a sick reindeer at first and went to investigate, said Kosintsev. When he saw that it was a mammoth, he went to the nearest village to tell of his find.
She was named Lyuba by scientists in honor of Khudi's wife, though how he feels about that is not yet known as he is back in the tundra with his reindeer.
"We could not contact him, but if he says it is not the right name we will change it," said Kosintsev. Mammoth finds are usually named after the person who finds them.
To keep her from deteriorating, Lyuba is being stored at minus 10 degrees Celsius in an industrial freezer in the Yamal-Nenets republic's regional museum in Salekhard, the regional capital.
Mammoths, believed to be close relatives of the modern day elephant, roamed the earth from almost 5 million years B.C. to just a few thousand years B.C. when they disappeared.
Although mammoths once inhabited almost the entire world, Russia has always had a strong association with the beast. Mammoths are considered special animals by northern tribes, said Natalia Fyodorova, the deputy director of the museum, in a telephone interview from Salekhard.
"All the native tribes have tales about this mythical animal," she said. When finding mammoth parts, native tribes such as the Nenets often take them to their holy places to talk with their souls. Now, she said with a touch of pride, "they tell the museum."
It is not only the native tribes who have their explanations for the mysterious animal. One mythic explanation for the existence of the woolly mammoth in the far reaches of Russia is that they were the last of Carthaginian General Hannibal's war elephants after they crossed over the Alps into Italy in the second century B.C.
An international conference gathered last month in Salekhard, including experts from the United States and France, to decide what to do with the mammoth.
Lyuba will go to Japan soon for a CT scan at Jikei University to be examined by a team led by professor Naoki Suzuki. "It will give a unique chance to compare the herbivores of then with today's," said Suzuki, Itar-Tass reported. After going to Japan, Lyuba will return to Russia.
"I think she will not only be shown in Salekhard but all over the world," said Fyodorova.
Archaeological excavations, in advance of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, have revealed an undisturbed 400 000 year old Early Stone Age site in the Ebbsfleet Valley, near Swanscombe, Kent. The skeleton of an elephant has been preserved in the muddy sediment near what was then the edge of a small lake. It is surrounded by flint tools, which lie undisturbed from where they were originally discarded.
Photo: H. Osborn, 'Men of the Old Stone Age' (1916), Palaeoloxodon antiquus.
Molluscs from the site
Photo: Francis Wenban-Smith
According to Dr. Wenban-Smith "This is a very exciting find. Only a handful of other elephant remains have been found in Britain, and none of these give any indication of human exploitation. This would have been a pretty hefty beast. It would have been over twice the height of a man, and weighed three or four times the weight of an average family car. It is hard to imagine early humans successfully hunting a healthy specimen, but if it was already trapped in the bog, it could have been killed by early humans with wooden spears, and then butchered for its meat with flint tools. What we need now is to find some more of its bones, see if they have cut-marks proving that it was butchered for its meat, and find out which parts of the elephant they preferred to eat. The steaks produced from even just this one beast would have fed a family of four for a month, although the meat would probably have been pretty rancid towards the end, since they lacked any means of refrigeration."
The elephant has been identified by Simon Parfitt of the Natural History Museum as the extinct Straight-tusked Elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), which was last present in England over 100 000 years ago. Bones from other large animals including buffalo and wild horse have also been found. Sieving of the sediments at the site has produced a wide range of evidence that reveal the climate and local environment, as well as helping date the site. The presence of sticklebacks, frogs, newts and aquatic molluscs confirm the presence of standing water at the site. The presence of pollen grains from a number of tree species — including birch, pine, oak, elm, alder and hazel — and teeth from a woodmouse indicate an interglacial climate, similar to or warmer than the present day, with the lake surrounded by woodland, probably with some open areas due to heavy grazing.
Vole teeth from the site
Photo: Francis Wenban-Smith
Most importantly, the presence of two species of vole — water vole (Arvicola cantiana) and pine vole (Pitymys arvaloides) — allow the site to be accurately dated by means of the so-called "vole clock". Investigations at sites across Europe have allowed construction of a detailed framework of how different vole species evolved over the last million years, and where and when specific species became extinct.
Of the two vole species found at the Ebbsfleet site, the pine vole has been extinct in England for the last 400 000 years and the type of water vole found has only been present for the last 500 000 years. Taken together, the two species help to date the site to the Hoxnian interglacial, a warm phase for which deposits are also preserved at nearby Swanscombe. Dr. Wenban-Smith said "The vole clock is one of the wonders of modern science.
It is truly incredible that the tiny remains of these creatures are so well preserved. For many sites it is the most accurate way of dating, and they also provide wonderfully precise information on the climate and local environment."
The deposits at the Ebbsfleet site are slightly older than those that produced the skull of "Swanscombe Man" — in fact now thought to be female — over 50 years ago at Barnfield Pit, Swanscombe about 2km away, but younger than those at Boxgrove, where a shin bone was found in 1993.
This miniature head (3.5 cm, (1.5 inches) was carved from mammoth ivory. Found at Brassempouy, Landes, France. It may be 30 000 years old. It is one of the few Ice Age figures with facial features and a detailed hairstyle. It is the original for the 'Ayla' head from Jean Auel's Earth Children series of books. Some doubt its authenticity, since it was recovered at a dig where the workers were paid by what they discovered.
Photo:
T. Powell 'Prehistoric Art'
Front view of the Lespugue Venus. This venus was carved from mammoth ivory and was damaged during excavation.
The obese form and exaggerated hips and breasts of the figure are common in many of the hundreds of venus figures from Europe.
Photo: http://www.toila.org/IMPalaeoG2.html
The woolly
mammoth Elephas primagenius
Photo: H.
Osborn, 'Men of the Old Stone Age' (1916)
Skeleton of a mammoth reconstructed from bones found in various caves in France.
Photo : Man before History by John Waechter
Body-part representation of mammoths (shaded). Numbers in parentheses indicate the minimum number
of individuals counted on each element. Short arrows in bold face: impact marks. Long narrow arrows:
cut marks. White arrows: breakage probably resulting from a heavy blow. Outline after Mol & Essen (1987).
From Fladerer (2001).
Mammoths in a winter landscape
Photo: http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/landofmammoth/eyecandy/main.html
