We’re continuing our theme week on Weird History! Today we’re talking about Woolly Mammoths. They lived mostly during the ice age, but there were small populations that lived much more recently than you probably thought! Recent research found that Woolly Mammoths lived on Saint Paul Island off the coast of Alaska until around 5,600 years ago. The last population known from fossils survived on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean until as recently as 1650 BC – thats’ about 1000 years after the pyramids of Giza were built in Egypt!
We know a lot about what woolly mammoths looked like thanks to the many frozen specimens that have been found with preserved soft tissue, along with the many depictions by contemporary humans in their artwork. They were about the same size as African elephants, but were well adapted to their cold environment. Not only were they covered in fun, but they had short ears and tails to minimize frostbite and heat loss. They also had large curved tusks that grew up to 14 feet long!
Woolly mammoths coexisted with early humans. They used its bones and tusks for making art and tools as well as hunting the animals for food. They also built dwellings using woolly mammoth bones. Their habitat stretched across northern Asia, many parts of Europe, and the northern part of North America.
Woolly mammoths are the 3rd-most depicted animal in ice age art, after horses and bison. More than 500 depictions of woolly mammoths are known to exist, from cave paintings to engravings and sculptures. Scientists are divided over what caused their extinction, climate change or hunting, or a combination of the two.
The existence of preserved soft tissue and DNA of woolly mammoths has led to the idea that woolly mammoths could be revived by scientific means. There’s a biosciences and genetics company called Colossal Biosciences that is trying to use genetic code to bring them back from extinction by equipping Asian elephants with mammoth traits. Last year, they said their goal is to have woolly mammoth hybrid calves by 2028 and they want to reintroduce them to the arctic tundra.
Learn more here.