| Mammuthus columbi, the Columbian mammoth, was perhaps the largest land animal alive at the end of the Pleistocene. These gigantic beasts inhabited the open grasslands of North America in wide ranging herds. Physically, they differed from the Woolly Mammoths, which were their contemporaries, by being much larger, and having slightly longer and less curving tusks than the Woolly mammoths. Columbian mammoths stood 12 feet tall at the shoulder, and their tusks often measured over 3.5 meters in length. Modern African elephant tusks usually measure under 2.5 meters in length, and modern Asian elephants, the closest living relatives of the mammoths, have tusks that are slightly shorter, with average lengths of under 2 meters.
Columbian mammoth remains have been found in numerous localities in the present day United States, usually in areas where a water suppy was present nearby. A notable example of a Columbian Mammoth fossil site is the Hot Springs, South Dakota. |