Games

A ten-question quiz, eight myth-or-fact cards, and a five-step walk from African origins to the last island herds. The answers follow the same sourced wording as the rest of the site.

Quiz

Mammoths, in Natural History Museum wording, were:

Woolly mammoths, Mammuthus primigenius, evolved, the Museum says:

The Natural History Museum puts woolly mammoth shoulder height at:

On Alaska’s St Paul Island, woolly mammoths lasted until:

A 1993 Nature letter dated Wrangel “dwarf mammoth” teeth to:

Lister’s view of mainland extinction, as given by the Museum, is that:

The Ilford skull, in Museum wording, belongs to:

Britannica’s woolly mammoth article says the outer hair grew, in some individuals:

The Bering land bridge, in Museum wording, allowed steppe mammoths to cross into North America about:

Columbian mammoths, the Museum says, lived:

Myth or fact?

Mammoths evolved into the elephants alive today.

Woolly mammoths lived in richly vegetated landscapes, mostly away from deep snow cover, in Museum wording.

The last mammoths were gone everywhere by around 9,500 years before present, as people once generally thought.

A woolly mammoth was heavier than any land animal alive today, at some 10 tonnes.

It is settled that inbreeding alone killed the last Wrangel mammoths.

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

Scientists have already resurrected a living woolly mammoth.

Lister thinks the data better fit the climate model as the main driver of extinction, but we cannot rule out that humans contributed.

From Africa to Wrangel Island

Elephantidae arose in Africa about seven million years ago and split into African elephants, Asian elephants and mammoths — cousins, not a straight line of descent.

About 3.5 million years ago, mammoths broke out of Africa and spread across Eurasia. Southern mammoths browsed shrubs and trees; steppe mammoths later grazed grass on cold, dry grassland.

Woolly mammoths evolved about 800,000–600,000 years ago in northeast Siberia, from steppe mammoths, and spread west across Eurasia and east into North America.

They were still in their heyday 20,000 years ago. As the last ice age ended, open habitat shrank. Mainland woolly mammoths were gone around 10,500 years ago, in Museum wording.

Isolated herds lived on after that: until 5,600 years ago on St Paul Island, and until 4,000 years ago — or, in Britannica’s wording, 4,300 — on Wrangel Island. What ended that last herd is still an open question.