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• What is a mammoth?

The mammoth is one of the extinct animals descended from the elephant family, as it was found as a fossil in ice deposits, and its remains were found on most continents, except for Australia and South America. Mammoths were of great importance to primitive humans; Scientists have found inscriptions of the shape of the mammoth drawn on the walls of caves.

Mammoth DNA is more than 1,000,000 years old and is, therefore, the oldest known DNA in the world.

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• Reasons for the extinction of the mammoth

Mammoth elephants were subjected to mass extinction, and the woolly mammoth was the last species to become extinct, as one of its members became extinct in Alaska in 6000 BC. What is the scientific explanation for the extinction of mammoths? It seems that scientists were not able to accurately determine the cause of the extinction, so they put forward several hypotheses to explain this phenomenon.

 The first hypothesis refers to the suggestion of some scientists that the mammoth began to become extinct due to climatic changes, which occurred with the beginning of the retreat of the Ice Age approximately 12,000 years ago; As the climate began to become wetter and warmer, the sea level rose and coastal areas were inundated, sparsely populated forests and pastures turned into dense forests, and the natural habitat of the mammoth disappeared, leading to its extinction.

As for the second hypothesis, it indicates that the mammoth became extinct as a result of being overfished by humans to obtain its meat, and some assume that the mammoths contracted an infectious disease that led to their collective death.

• Mammoth Characteristics

Mammoth elephants have the following characteristics:

Skin

Mammoths have thick skin, up to 2.5 cm thick, in a yellowish-brown color. The skin is covered with dark brown hairs up to half a meter in length, and under the originally thick skin, there is a layer of insulating fat that may be up to 8 cm thick.

skull

 The mammoth's skull was characterized by being high and having the shape of a dome.

the ears

The ears of the mammoth are small in size for an elephant, and it is a kind of adaptation to living in a cold climate, as the smaller the outer surface area, the lower the rate of heat loss from the body.

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The mammoth had a mass of fat in the form of a hump, and scientists inferred the presence of the hump from the drawings that humans used to draw on the walls of caves.

the teeth

 In addition to their long tusks, mammoths had teeth made up of layers of enamel, which were damaged by chewing.

Diet

 Mammoths feed on leaves and shrubs, and scientists have concluded that mammoths ate about 317 kg of grass and leave every day.

Age

Mammoths live between 60 and 80 years.

the weight

 The weight of the mammoth ranges from 6,000 to 10,000 kg.

the size

Mammoths reach a height of 3.5 m.

• mammoth clone

Although thousands of years have passed since the extinction of the woolly mammoth, this did not stop people from thinking about cloning a mammoth;  Some scientists believe that mammoth remains preserved in ice may provide samples with enough DNA to reproduce.

Cloning is a complex, multi-step process that aims to transform a healthy cell containing intact DNA into stem cells, which in turn divide several times in a test tube, and when the time is right, they are transferred to the uterus of a suitable host animal for implantation, and then the fetus is left to continue its development in the womb until the time of birth.  Is it possible to apply these steps to get a cloned woolly mammoth?

Scientists believe that the difficulty of cloning a mammoth lies in its DNA, which usually begins to decompose immediately after death, so how can it be preserved intact for a period that extends for thousands of years?  Although a reputable scientific team has indicated that it has deciphered the near-complete genome of a 40,000-year-old woolly mammoth, the most hopeful is to recover individual mammoth genes and combine them with current elephant DNA to create a hybrid mammoth. 

In this case, another problem must be overcome, which is attacking the immune system of the host female of the hybrid zygote, which may cause a miscarriage, and this is by giving the surrogate mother appropriate medications, or by using more effective cultivation techniques, and perhaps by producing female elephants to accept  The hybrid fetus, and assuming that the previous difficulties were overcome, a suitable place must be provided for the mammoth to live.

Many mammoth elephants must be cloned because mammoths live in a herd and a single mammoth cannot live alone. Is it possible to imagine the impact of a herd of mammoths on the environment, and can it be guaranteed that it will not wreak havoc in the current environment of elephants that deserve our protection instead of thinking about restoring  An already extinct animal?

• mammoth species

Mammoth breeds have diversified through the ages, and also differed in their places of existence, and the shape and size of their body the following is the most important information about the types of mammoths.

1- the woolly mammoth

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), also called the northern mammoth, or Siberian, is the most widespread and well-known of the mammoth species, and its corpse was found preserved in Siberian ice, which led to the availability of a lot of information about its structure and behavior.

2- African mammoth

The African mammoth (M. Africanus) is one of the giant mammoth species, as it descends from the southern mammoth lineage (M. meridionalis), and it lived in North Africa during the Pliocene period. It is worth noting that the mammoth is one of the mammoth species that evolved from previous breeds.

3- Colombian Mammoth

 Scientists believe that the Colombian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) has less hair than other subspecies, due to its presence in Eurasia, which is less frozen than Europe during the Pleistocene period, as it reaches a height of 4 meters, and lived during the Ice Age in both Canada and the United States. The United States, and Mexico.

4- mammoth pygmy

 The pygmy mammoth, also known as the pygmy mammoth, reaches a height of 2 m, while other mammoth species can reach 4 m in length, and lived in the Channel Islands in California, including Santa Cruz ), San Miguel, and Santa Rosa Island in the Late Pleistocene.

5- imperial mammoth

 The imperial mammoth (Mammuthus imperator) is one of the most massive mammoths ever discovered. It is one of the largest terrestrial mammals currently known in North America. The legendary mammoth reaches a height of 4.9 m. It also lived in North America during the Pliocene period until the end of the Ice Age.

6- Mammoth Jefferson

The details of the shape of the Jeffersonian Mammoth are unknown because of the inability of scientists to find preserved fossil remains of it, as scientists found some of its remains preserved in glacial sediments dating back to the Ice Age, and the height of this mammoth reaches 3.7 m, and its weight ranges from From 5,500 to 7,300 kg.

7- Steppe mammoth

The steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii) has the largest proboscis among all other mammoth species, has large tusks 5 m high, and lived in forest lands in ancient times.

The height of the steppe mammoth ranges from 4 to 4.7 m, and its weight is about 7,000 kg. It also lived in Eurasia during the middle Pleistocene.

8- Southern Mammoth

The southern mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis) is one of the oldest subspecies in the fossil record and is often thought of as the later generations of the mammoth. The southern mammoth reaches a height of 4 m.

9- South African mammoth

The South African mammoth (Mammuthus subplanifrons) is the oldest known mammoth subspecies, and it lived in southeastern Africa including Ethiopia and South Africa and could reach a height of 3.7 m.

10- Sardinian dwarf mammoth

The Sardinian mammoth (Mammuthus lamarmorai) is a dwarfed species known from the Ice Age of Sardinia (Italy), as it was discovered by chance at the end of the 19th century during the construction of a railway in Italy, after which the construction of the skeleton of a Sardinian mammoth began but it was not completed.

11- Mammoth of the Songhua River

The Mammuthus Sungari is one of the largest mammoth subspecies, and the second-largest terrestrial mammal, as it lived in China in the period of the middle of the Ice Age.

• Mammoth evolution

The origin of the mammoth is due to the African mammoth, where the mammoth lived in North Africa and became extinct about 3 or 4 million years ago, then the new generation descended from this mammoth moved north and settled in the Eurasia region, and this generation was called the southern mammoth.

The southern mammoth crossed into North America in the early Pleistocene and evolved in the middle Pleistocene to appear a new breed of it called the imperial mammoth, then the Columbian mammoth appeared in the late Pleistocene.