Wooly Mammoth

The woolly mammoth, woolly elephant or tundra mammoth is an extinct proboscidean of the elephant family that probably became extinct because of climate change and the loss of its habitat at the end of the Pleistocene. With its covering of long, shaggy hair, it was a species adapted to the extreme climate of the ice age. Mammuthus primigenius was similar in size to the average elephant of today. Many bones and curved tusks, as well as whole frozen bodies, of animals of this mammoth species have been found in Siberia, on the Arctic islands and in North America. The first complete specimen of this animal was discovered in 1806, near the mouth of the Lena River, in Siberia, Russia.