In short

Facts at a glance

A shorter path through the same sourced claims. The full list, and the disagreements, live on the fact-check log.

What they were

A mammoth, in Britannica wording, is any member of an extinct group of elephants (genus Mammuthus) found as fossils in Pleistocene deposits over every continent except Australia and South America and in early Holocene deposits of North America. Britannica

Mammoths don’t just look like elephants — they were elephants. Modern elephants and mammoths both belong to the elephant family, Elephantidae. Prehistoric mammoths didn’t evolve into modern-day elephants; they are cousins. Natural History Museum

The woolly mammoth, the Natural History Museum says, is an ice age icon, but it was only the very last chapter in a six-million-year-long story. Natural History Museum

A woolly mammoth, in Britannica wording, is an extinct species of elephant, Mammuthus primigenius, found in fossil deposits of the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs (from about 2.6 million years ago to the present) in Europe, northern Asia, and North America. Britannica

How they looked

The woolly mammoth, Lister says, despite what people think, was about halfway between the modern Asian and African elephants: 3-3.5 metres at shoulder height and about four to five or six tonnes in body weight, depending on whether it is a male or female. Natural History Museum

Woolly mammoths stood about 3 to 3.7 meters (about 10 to 12 feet) tall and weighed between 5,500 and 7,300 kg (between about 6 and 8 tons). Britannica

They had a yellowish brown undercoat about 2.5 cm (about 1 inch) thick beneath a coarser outer covering of dark brown hair that grew more than 70 cm (27.5 inches) long in some individuals. Under the extremely thick skin was a layer of insulating fat at times 8 cm (3 inches) thick. Britannica

Mammoth tusks, Lister says, are not just curved: they are actually in a spiral shape — they curve in two dimensions. In living elephants, they just gently curve in one dimension. Natural History Museum

Where, and Britain

The woolly mammoth lived in steppe tundra habitat (also called mammoth steppe, an ecosystem made up of low shrubs, sedges, and grasses), which was widespread across Eurasia and North America during the Pleistocene, but there is some evidence that some populations also inhabited forests of the present-day Midwestern United States. Britannica

Fossils of southern mammoths, steppe mammoths and woolly mammoths have all been found in Britain. Natural History Museum

The Ilford mammoth skull, which belongs to a steppe mammoth, is the largest and most complete of its kind ever found in Britain. It was discovered by workers in Ilford in East London in 1864 who were digging for clay to make bricks. Lister says the sample is kind of an intermediate stage between the steppe mammoth and the woolly mammoth, about 200,000 years old. Natural History Museum

The last herds

On Alaska’s St Paul Island, they lasted until 5,600 years ago and, further north, on Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago. Natural History Museum

By 4,000 years ago they were gone. Natural History Museum

Along with normal-sized mammoth fossils dating to the end of the Pleistocene, numerous teeth of dwarf mammoth dated 7,000-4,000 yr BP have been found there. The island is thought to have become separated from the mainland by 12,000 yr BP. Nature, 1993

Open questions

Lister thinks it may be a combination of the two. He thinks the data better fits the climate model as the main driver, but we can’t rule out that humans contributed. Natural History Museum

Other evidence suggests that woolly mammoths persisted until 5,600 years ago on St. Paul Island, Alaska, in the Bering Sea and as late as 4,300 years ago on Wrangel Island, an Arctic island located off the coast of northern Russia, before succumbing to extinction from inbreeding and loss of genetic diversity. Britannica

The Museum also has not identified any significant environmental change on Wrangel about 4,000 years ago. There’s nothing obvious in climate or vegetation. It is possible that genetic mutations in this small and isolated population may have led to poor health and ultimately extinction. Natural History Museum