The woolly mammoth, Mammuthus primigenius, is an extinct herbivore related to elephants who trudged across the steppe-tundras of Eurasia and North America from around 300,000 years ago until their numbers seriously dropped from around 11,000 years ago. A few last stragglers survived into the Holocene on island refuges off the coast of Siberia and Alaska. One of these - Wrangel Island - harboured the last known group of mammoths until around 3,700 years ago.
More about: Woolly MammothDefinition
Timeline
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c. 2600000 BCE - c. 12000 BCEThe Pleistocene epoch, ranging from c. 2,6 million years ago until c. 12,000 years ago. It is characterised by repeated cycles of glacials and interglacials.
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c. 2600000 BCE - c. 12000 BCEThe Palaeolithic (or Old Stone Age) period, ranging from c. 2,6 million years ago until c. 12,000 years ago.
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c. 300000 BCEWoolly mammoths appear on the steppe-tundras of Eurasia and North America. .
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c. 11000 BCEFrom roughly this time onwards it becomes noticeable that woolly mammoth populations went into serious decline. .
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c. 3700 BCEThe last known group of woolly mammoths die out on Wrangel Island, Siberia.
