A
mammoth is any
species of the
extinct genus Mammuthus,
proboscideans commonly equipped with long, curved
tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long
hair. They lived from the
Pliocene epoch (from around 5 million years ago) into the
Holocene at about 4,500 years ago in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They were members of the family
Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern
elephants and their ancestors. Mammoths stem from an ancestral species called
M. africanavus, the African mammoth. These mammoths lived in northern Africa and disappeared about 3 or 4 million years ago. Descendants of these mammoths moved north and eventually covered most of Eurasia. These were
M. meridionalis, the 'southern mammoths'.
