Woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth was a shaggy, elephant-like giant that roamed icy landscapes until it vanished thousands of years ago. It shared its world with other mammoth species and was closely related to today’s Asian elephants. People once thought their massive bones belonged to mythical beasts before science revealed their true story.

• Lived from the Middle Pleistocene until the Holocene epoch.
• Became distinct from steppe mammoths around 800,000 years ago in Siberia.
• Hybridized with Columbian mammoths in North America.