Inside: Exhibition Introduction & Curriculum Connections

2.  What was one adaptation that resulted from mammoths living in cold environments?

  

Mammoths eventually evolved thick fat layers beneath their skin. They also had a warm “undercoat” of fur and an 

“overcoat” of guard hairs—some up to three feet in length—to protect against the wind.

This illustration shows four female woolly 

mammoths in their herd. Fossil records indicate 

that herds consisted of adult females and young 

calves. When male mammoths reached young 

adulthood, they left their herd.  

Illustration by Velizar Simeonovski © The Field Museum

An international team of scientists studied Lyuba 

after her discovery, performing an autopsy and DNA 

analysis. 

© RIA Novosti

Exhibit Area Overviews 

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Stomping Grounds: Where Mammoths Roamed 

As proboscideans spread beyond Africa, about 

20 million years ago, they moved across Europe 

and Asia into the Americas. Over their six million 

year history, proboscideans were able to adapt to 

diverse environments: Asian elephants in tropical 

forests; woolly mammoths in cold, dry steppes; and 

mastodons in temperate woodlands. In the American 

West, Columbian mammoths shared the landscape 

with other animals and plants. Today, scientists use 

clues from the past, such as plant pollen and animal 

dung, to help re-create diverse mammoth habitats. 

In the early 1800s, the first scientific expeditions to 

Siberia collected remains of mammoths. These early 

discoveries sparked the public’s fascination with 

woolly mammoths and their wintry habitats. In places 

like Siberia and Alaska, cold permafrost helps preserve 

mammoth remains, and the abundance of woolly 

mammoth bones here often leads people to believe that mammoths only lived in snowy, cold climates. But in 

fact, during the last Ice Age, many of these areas were drier and less snowy than they are today. Mammoths also 

lived in warmer climates, but their remains are often less well preserved in these regions. 

During the Pleistocene, or last great Ice Age, mammoths lived alongside many other mammals—many 

now extinct. They shared their North American habitat with other herbivores like rabbits, antelopes, camels, 

horses and giant ground sloths—the largest herbivores after mammoths and mastodons. Powerful carnivores 

also populated these regions: dire wolves, short-faced bears, and American scimitar-toothed cats—the most 

successful predators of mammoths.