Meaning of name: Mammuthus primigenius means ‘first-born mammoth’
Named by: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 1799
Time period: Middle Pleistocene-late Holocene
Size: 2.8-3.15m tall for males, 2.3-2.6m tall for females
Diet: Herbivore
Origin: North America and Eurasia
Fossils seen at: Dublin, Belfast, London, Edinburgh, Paris
Interesting fact: Although mammoths were largely driven to global extinction by humans around the end of the Pleistocene, one population of woolly mammoths managed to survive on Wrangel Island off the coast of Russia up until about 3,700 years ago, when human civilization had already begun.
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