The ancient mammoth was a relative of the modern elephant.
One name of the mammoth is Elephas primigenius, which means "first-born elephant."
The mammoth is now extinct and is found only as a fossil.
Mammoths lived from the Pliocene Epoch from around 4.8 million years ago, into the Pleistocene at about 4,500 years ago.
Cave drawings by the CroMagnon men 10,000 years ago show that the mammoth was hunted for its meat.
The word mammoth comes from the Russian мамонт mamont, probably in turn from the Vogul (Mansi) language, mang ont, meaning "earth horn".
Steppe mammoth evolved into woolly mammoth
Most of the characteristics of the mammoth were identical to the modern Indian elephant, One difference was its thick, dark brown hair, sometimes two feet long.
In English language the noun "mammoth" has become an adjective meaning "large" or "massive".
The mammoth also had short, furry ears and a special spiral to the tusks that modern elephants do not have.
Woolly mammoths traveled into North America via the land bridge (Central Beringia) ~1.8 mya
In January 2011, a team of scientists headed by Akira Iritani of Kyoto University, say they will extract DNA from a mammoth carcass that had been preserved in a Russian laboratory and insert it into the egg cells of an African elephant in hopes of producing a mammoth embryo. The researchers said they hoped to produce a baby mammoth within six years.
