Some researchers have doubts that mammoths lived in the cold climate zones. Recently, Russian scientists have received strong evidence of woolly mammoths' frost-resistance - they possessed sebaceous glands. The trip to visit mammoths was paid by the International Scientific and Technical Center, and the researchers' search for sebaceous glands was supported by the Federal Target Scientific and Technical Program entitled "Investigations and Developments for Science and Engineering Priority Guidelines in 2002-2006".
Specialists of the VECTOR State Research Center for Virology and Biotechnology and the Zoological Institute (Russian Academy of Sciences) have discovered sebaceous glands in the skin of woolly mammoths, the scientific community unsuccessfully looking for sebaceous glands for more than a hundred years. As sebaceous glands are an instrument of adaptation to cold climate, the discovery by Russian scientists serves a convincing argument in the dispute whether the mammoths did live in the frost.
From studying the intestines in frozen mammoth remains, we are able to identify exactly what the diet of woolly mammoths was.
We know from studying their remains, that woolly mammoths ate herbaceous plants (herbs), flowering plants, shrubs, mosses and matter from trees.
The woolly mammoth had evolved a "two-fingertip" trunk which enabled them to "pick up" and eat the short grasses and shrubbery that were a part of their diets in the last ice age. In comparison, modern elephants wrap their trunks around tall tufts of grass and yank them up.
We also know from studying the intestines of some frozen mammoths which have been recovered that they, particularly the younger ones, ate faecal matter. The most famous mammoth studied for this are the recovered frozen remains of a calf who has been named Lyuba, who is the world's most preserved mammoth specimen and currently "resides" in a museum in Salekhard, Russia. The faecal matter, we believe, was digested, particularly by younger mammoths, to help promote intestinal microbes, which aided the digestion of heavy vegetation.
Further Reading
Mammoths lived on grassy plains from the Arctic to the tropics. Their remains have been found in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America. Different species lived in different areas, for example, the woolly mammoth lived in the tundra and the Columbian mammoth lived in temperate to tropical grasslands.
Yes. Not only woolly mammoths, but other species, such as the Columbian mammoth (native to North America) lived during the last Ice Age.
Mammoths are extinct, although they (wooly mammoths) existed during the ice age period.
The Woolly mammoth used its incisors (tusks) to dig in the snow and pick up plants and tree parts to eat.
cold
Mammoths are extinct. They don't live anywhere now.
The mammoths lived for 100,000000 of years but a mammoths lived for 80 years
Woolly Mammoths are extinct.
Mammoths lived all around the northern hemisphere.
Mammoths have been extinct for tens of thousands of years.
no
yes
No, mammoths didn't live in Antarctica. It's too cold there, and there is no food chain for any animal.
Mammoths are now extinct.
no they didnt
Mammoths were grass eating animals. Because grass grows well in the plains, that would have been an ideal habitat for mammoths. In fact, woolly mammoths lived in the tundra, which are dry, treeless plains, and Columbian mammoths lived in the Great Plains.
in 5000 bc