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Ancient life · Mammals and their kin

Woolly mammoth

An Ice Age elephant of the far north.

Our sources give no reliable size for Woolly mammoth, so this outline of its body shape is not drawn to scale.

When
At least half a million years, until about 4,000 years ago
Where
Parts of the northern hemisphere
A woolly mammoth skeleton with long curving tusks in a museum gallery.
A woolly mammoth skeleton at the Field Museum, Chicago.Woolly Mammoth-Field Museum by Jonathan Chen, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized. This version is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 too.

Woolly mammoths roamed parts of the northern hemisphere for at least half a million years. They were still in their heyday 20,000 years ago. Within 10,000 years they were down to isolated groups off the coasts of Siberia and Alaska, and by 4,000 years ago they were gone.

Woolly mammoth640 Manow
Woolly mammoth: 0.5 to 0.004 million years ago. That is 0.0% of the way back to the Earth’s birth.Periods from the ICS chart

Read more in The age of mammals.

Also in mammals and their kin

  • Dimetrodon A sail-backed hunter on our side of the family tree
  • Brasilodon Possibly the oldest mammal, or one of its closest relatives
  • Morganucodon A tiny early mammal named after Glamorgan
  • Pakicetus One of the first whales, with four legs
  • Dorudon An early whale that lived wholly in the sea
  • Blue whale The largest animal ever to live

Sources