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The woolly mammoth (''Mammuthus primigenius'') is a species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene epoch, and was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with ''Mammuthus subplanifrons'' in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth diverged from the steppe mammoth about 400,000 years ago in eastern Asia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The appearance and behaviour of this species are among the best studied of any prehistoric animal because of the discovery of frozen carcasses in Siberia and Alaska, as well as skeletons, teeth, stomach contents, dung, and depiction from life in prehistoric cave paintings. Mammoth remains had long been known in Asia before they became known to Europeans in the 17th century. The origin of these remains was long a matter of debate, and often explained as being remains of legendary creatures. The mammoth was identified as an extinct species of elephant by Georges Cuvier in 1796. The woolly mammoth was roughly the same size as modern African elephants. Males reached shoulder heights between and weighed up to . Females averaged in height and weighed up to . A newborn calf weighed about . The woolly mammoth was well adapted to the cold environment during the last ice age. It was covered in fur, with an outer covering of long guard hairs and a shorter undercoat. The colour of the coat varied from dark to light. The ears and tail were short to minimise frostbite and heat loss. It had long, curved tusks and four molars, which were replaced six times during the lifetime of an individual. Its behaviour was similar to that of modern elephants, and it used its tusks and trunk for manipulating objects, fighting, and foraging. The diet of the woolly mammoth was mainly grass and sedges. Individuals could probably reach the age of 60. Its habitat was the mammoth steppe, which stretched across northern Eurasia and North America. The woolly mammoth coexisted with early humans, who used its bones and tusks for making art, tools, and dwellings, and the species was also hunted for food. It disappeared from its mainland range at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 years ago, most likely through climate change and consequent shrinkage of its habitat, hunting by humans, or a combination of the two. Isolated populations survived on St. Paul Island until 6,400 years ago and Wrangel Island until 4,000 years ago. After its extinction, humans continued using its ivory as a raw material, a tradition that continues today. It has been proposed the species could be recreated through cloning, but this method is as yet infeasible because of the degraded state of the remaining genetic material. ==Taxonomy== Remains of various extinct elephants were known by Europeans for centuries, but were generally interpreted, based on biblical accounts, as the remains of legendary creatures such as behemoths or giants. It was also theorised that they were remains of modern elephants that had been brought to Europe during the Roman Republic, for example the war elephants of Hannibal and Pyrrhus of Epirus, or animals that had wandered north. The first woolly mammoth remains studied by European scientists were examined by Hans Sloane in 1728 and consisted of fossilised teeth and tusks from Siberia. Sloane was the first to recognise that the remains belonged to elephants. Sloane turned to another biblical explanation for the presence of elephants in the Arctic, asserting that they had been buried during the Great Flood, and that Siberia had previously been tropical prior to a drastic climate change. Others interpreted Sloane's conclusion slightly differently, arguing the flood had carried elephants from the Tropics to the Arctic. Sloane's paper was based on travellers' descriptions and a few scattered bones collected in Siberia and Britain. He discussed the question of whether or not the remains were from elephants, but drew no conclusions. In 1738, Johann Philipp Breyne argued that mammoth fossils represented some kind of elephant. He could not explain why a tropical animal would be found in such a cold area as Siberia, and suggested that they might have been transported there by the Great Flood. In 1796, French anatomist Georges Cuvier was the first to identify the woolly mammoth remains not as modern elephants transported to the Arctic, but as an entirely new species. He argued this species had gone extinct and no longer existed, a concept that was not widely accepted at the time.〔 Following Cuvier's identification, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach gave the woolly mammoth its scientific name, ''Elephas primigenius'', in 1799, placing it in the same genus as the Asian elephant. This name is Latin for "first elephant". Cuvier coined the name ''Elephas mammonteus'' a few months later, but the former name was subsequently used.〔 In 1828, Joshua Brookes used the name ''Mammuthus borealis'' for woolly mammoth fossils in his collection that he put up for sale, thereby coining a new genus name. It is unclear where and how the word "mammoth" originated. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it comes from an old Vogul word mēmoŋt 'earth-horn'.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/113184 )〕 It may be a version of ''mehemot'', the Arabic version of the biblical word "behemoth". Another possible origin is Estonian, where ''maa'' means earth, and ''mutt'' means mole. The word was first used in Europe during the early 17th century, when referring to ''maimanto'' tusks discovered in Siberia.〔Lister, 2007. p. 49〕 Thomas Jefferson, who had a keen interest in palaeontology, is partially responsible for transforming the word ''mammoth'' from a noun describing the prehistoric elephant to an adjective describing anything of surprisingly large size. The first recorded use of the word as an adjective was in a description of a wheel of cheese (the "Cheshire Mammoth Cheese") given to Jefferson in 1802.〔Simpson, J. (2009). "(Word Stories: Mammoth )." ''Oxford English Dictionary Online'', Oxford University Press. Accessed 5 June 2009.〕 The taxonomy of extinct elephants was complicated by the early 20th century, and in 1942, Henry Fairfield Osborn's posthumous monograph on the Proboscidea was published, wherein he used various taxon names that had previously been proposed for mammoth species, including replacing ''Mammuthus'' with ''Mammonteus'', as he believed the former name to be invalidly published. Mammoth taxonomy was simplified by various researchers from the 1970s onwards, all species were retained in the genus ''Mammuthus'', and many proposed differences between species were instead interpreted as intraspecific variation. Osborn chose two molars (found in Siberia and Osterode) from Blumenbach's collection at Göttingen University as the lectotype specimens for the woolly mammoth, since holotype designation was not practised in Blumenbach's time. Vera Gromova further proposed the former should be considered the lectotype with the latter as paralectotype. Both molars were thought lost by the 1980s, and the more complete "Taimyr mammoth" found in Siberia in 1948 was therefore proposed as the neotype specimen in 1990. Resolutions to historical issues about the validity of the genus name ''Mammuthus'' and the type species designation of ''E. primigenius'' were also proposed. The paralectotype molar (specimen GZG.V.010.018) has since been located in the Göttingen University collection, identified by comparing it with Osborn's illustration of a cast. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Woolly mammoth」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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