Interesting facts about mammoths

• 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.