A northern world
Where they lived, and where fossils are found
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 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
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 The woolly mammoth was herbivorous, consuming the stems and leaves of tundra plants and shrubs. Britannica Artwork of woolly mammoths sometimes places them against stark, snowy backdrops. But while they were adapted to cold conditions, they were living in richly vegetated landscapes, mostly away from deep snow cover. Natural History Museum
Oceans now entirely separate Eurasia and North America, but in the time of mammoths a strip of land connected the eastern tip of Russia to western Alaska: the Bering land bridge. Steppe mammoths crossed this into North America about 1.5 million years ago. Natural History Museum Genetic evidence suggests that woolly mammoths spread to Europe about 200,000 years ago and from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge to North America about 125,000 years ago. Britannica
When did woolly mammoths reach North America?
Britannica says genetic evidence suggests woolly mammoths spread from Asia across the Bering Land Bridge to North America about 125,000 years ago. The Natural History Museum says the earliest fossil evidence of woolly mammoths in North America is only 200,000 years old, and sets that against a proposed hybridisation 400,000 years ago in the ancestry of Columbian mammoths — a puzzle Lister and colleagues are still unpicking. “125,000” and “200,000” are different figures, from different kinds of evidence. Both stay in view.
Columbian mammoths, Mammuthus columbi, lived in North America, from southern Canada down to Costa Rica. Natural History Museum Fossils of southern mammoths, steppe mammoths and woolly mammoths have all been found in Britain. Natural History Museum
Britain has its own short page: the Ilford skull and the fossils found here.
The relative abundance and, at times, excellent preservation of carcasses of this species found in the permafrost (permanently frozen ground) of Siberia have provided much information about mammoths’ structure and habits. These carcasses are so well preserved that sled dogs have been fed thawed woolly mammoth meat dating to more than 30,000 years ago, and fossil mammoth ivory was previously so abundant that it was exported from Siberia to China and Europe from medieval times. Britannica