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MAMMOTH The steak of the Pleistocene peoples, the mammoth was the most widely sought after prey of the early hunters. Many examples of the woolly Northern (aka Siberian) mammoth have remained remarkably intact, preserved for thousands of years in Arctic ice. Inuit Arctic peoples have reportedly fed frozen mammoth meat to sled dogs; perhaps they were unaware that the meat was in fact 30,000 years old. Mammoths had a shoulder height of 10 to 12 feet. Their tusks averaged 9 to 15 feet in length, and were used to chip away at ice for food and water. On average, they consumed 40 gallons of water and 600 pounds of food each day. As global temperatures rose at the end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago, these distant relatives of the elephant became extinct. |
