Woolly mammoth: The giant of the Ice Age

The woolly mammoth is one of the most famous giants of the Ice Age. Clad in thick fur and carrying long, curved tusks, it looked rather like today's elephants — but it was actually a distant cousin of the elephant, not an ancestor. An adult stood about 3 to 3.5 metres tall at the shoulder, so it would tower over you.

Its body

The woolly mammoth was a walking "cold-weather kit". A thick coat of hair covered its body, with a layer of fat beneath the skin. Its ears were smaller than an elephant's and its tail shorter, both helping to reduce heat loss in the cold. Its long, curving tusks were used to clear snow, find food and spar with rivals. Big, sturdy feet stood on frozen ground like thick winter boots.

Interestingly, it did not always live in deep snow. It more often lived in open, plant-rich country, using its tusks and trunk to reach grass and leaves under the snow.

Where it lived and what it ate

It was a plant-eater, feeding on grass, tundra shrubs and twigs. It lived from the Pleistocene to the early Holocene across northern Eurasia and northern North America. Elephants generally live in family groups, and mammoths probably did too, using their tusks and social interactions to hold the herd together.

Where its fossils were found

Mammoth fossils and remains have been found abundantly across northern Eurasia and northern North America. Because it lived in cold regions, some individuals were preserved whole in permafrost or ice — hair, soft tissue and even stomach contents intact — making them among the most precious "time capsules" of the Ice Age.

What the fossils tell us — and what they do not

Because preservation can be so fine, we can even know what a mammoth ate in its last meal, the colour of its hair and its body proportions. But its call, how it interacted with early humans and exactly how it went extinct are still partly debated. Colours are usually known quite well; behaviour remains scientific inference.

A note for grown-ups

You could talk with a child about "clothing": why does a mammoth need so much fur? Connecting a body feature to a cold environment is one of the clearest first lessons in how animals adapt.