This is a huge woolly mammoth’s tusk!
Can you imagine the size of this beast?
But actually how large were woolly mammoths?
A lot of people think of woolly mammoths as huge, but there are a few mammoth species described so far (about 10 or so from different time periods and locations) and most of them were not actually bigger than modern elephants, perhaps around the size of Asian Elephants.
A few different sized Mammuthus species lived in Siberia at different times, the Southern Mammoth and the Steppe Mammoth were both older and about twice the size of the Woolly Mammoth which was actually pretty small.
One of the really cool things they can do with mammoth tusks is look at the ‘rings’ like a tree and figure out from growth patterns various things about their lives, like how many calves a female might have had during her life.
Well changing the spelling, they can dramatically increase in size!
Yea, in my imagination I want prehistoric beasts to be legendary in stature – something that could not possibly exist today because it was so impossibly large. The reality check takes the magic out. Too bad! But I have learned something today!
Discover now the largest known dinosaur!
