Columbian Mammoth

Mammuthus columbis

Columbian Mammoth. (Painting by Zdenek Burian)

The Columbian Mammoth (sometimes refered to as Colombian Mammoth) lived in Northern America (from Alaska, and the Yukon, across the mid-western United States south into Mexico and Central America) during Middle and Late Pleistocene, and they disappeared about 12 thousands years ago.

They were probably a descendant of The Southern Mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis) , but although a Mammoth , They had short gray hair similar to to a modern elephant.

This species seems to have been very varied, especially in their size, eventually because some populations was very isolated.

On islands Channel (California), lived Dwarf Colombian Mammoths (called Dzefersons mammoth) with a height of about 1.8 meters, while in the south of North America they had a height of 4-4.5 meters.

The Columbian mammoth weighed up to nine tons, and its enormous tusks were up to 4.9 meters (16 feet) long. The heaviest tusks ever known, belonged to the Columbian Mammoth, these weighed 226kg or 498lb.

Excavation sites

The moar tooth found by Mr Russell Smolder

• Over one million bones have been collected out of the Rancho La Brea tar pits since 1906
• The Dry Gulch Mammoth Site, Smokey Bear Ranger District, Lincoln National Forest New Mexico, was discovered in 1987 by a miner who recognized the tip of a tusk in a gully near Ruidoso, New Mexico, and in April 1998, a full scale excavation began
• A nearly complete skeleton of the Colombian mammoth was discovered by construction crews in Huntington Canyon, between Fairview and Huntington, Utah, U.S.A. in 1988.(on display at the University of Utah Museum of Natural History and the College of Eastern Utah's Prehistoric Museum in Price)
• A molar tooth from a Columbian Mammoth, found by Mr Russell Smolder in St. Johns River, Florida, U.S.A.

Films