Mammoth

Fossil Record in Canada

During the Ice Age, glaciers moved across much of Canada. This movement likely eroded away much of the fossil record of large, extinct Ice Age mammals, including mammoths. As a result, the record of mammoths in Canada is mostly made up of isolated pieces of skeleton found in deeply buried deposits or in areas that were not impacted by the movement of glaciers. Isolated bones, teeth and tusks are often found in sand and gravel pits in Western Canada and in placer mines in Yukon, where large areas of land remained free of glacial ice. Rare records of partial mammoth skeletons found near Kyle, Saskatchewan and Muirkirk, Ontario — two of the most complete mammoth skeletons discovered in Canada — were located in sediments that were not impacted by the movement of glacial ice during the Ice Age. In addition, paleontologists have found rare records of mammoth footprints in southern Alberta. The footprints date from near the time of mammoths’ extinction in North America.

Paleontologists use differences in each species’ teeth to distinguish between them. The molars of Columbian mammoths have thicker, more widely spaced enamel plates than the molars of woolly mammoths.

Of the two species found in Canada, records of woolly mammoth are far more common. Records of other species do occur in the literature on Canadian discoveries (e.g., M. meridionalis, M. imperator), but those specimens may be misidentified, or the species name may not be valid. The number of valid, named species of mammoths in North America has ranged from as many as 16 to as few as four.

Description

Woolly mammoths stood between 2.7 and 3.4 m at the shoulder and weighed up to 5.4 tonnes, a body size similar to living African elephants. Cave paintings found in Eurasia and soft tissue found in permafrost-preserved carcasses found in Russia provide great detail about the body of woolly mammoths. They had a long outer coat of hairs up to 90 cm long, with a dense underwool, allowing them to thrive in cold environments. Additionally, they had high-domed heads, humped backs, short tails, small ears, greatly curved tusks, and a trunk with two “fingers” at the tip. A unique expansion of skin found near the lower one-third of the trunk in woolly mammoths is absent in living elephants. It may represent another adaptation to cold climates. The expansion may have allowed woolly mammoths to wrap the tip of the trunk into the folds, keeping it warm and acting as a “mitten.”

Columbian mammoths were larger than woolly mammoths. They stood between 3.6 and 4.0 m at the shoulder and weighed up to 9 tonnes. Far less is known of the soft body characteristics of Columbian mammoths.

Evolution

Ancestral populations of mammoths arrived in North America from Eurasia via the Bering Land Bridge at least 1.3 to 1.5 million years ago. They quickly dispersed across most of the continent. Columbian mammoths are likely descendants of those ancestral populations, with their evolutionary history occurring in North America. Woolly mammoths evolved in Beringia and dispersed into North America later. The exact timing of the arrival of mammoths across Canada is unknown, because the movement of glacial ice or other forces eroded away most of the early fossil record. Research on ancient mammoth DNA preserved in fossils from Canada and elsewhere is revealing great patterns of complexity in the evolution of mammoths. There is even some indication of instances of hybridization between woolly and Columbian mammoths.

Distribution and Habitat

Mammoths were common in many areas of Western Canada. Paleontologists have recovered remains from broad areas of Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Yukon, as well as from parts of British Columbia and Saskatchewan. In parts of Eastern Canada, namely Manitoba and Ontario, mammoth remains are far less abundant. Mammoth fossils from Georges Bank, located in the Gulf of Maine between Cape Cod and Nova Scotia, do indicate the presence of mammoths on the East Coast of Canada and the United States, though paleontologists have not found fossils in the Atlantic provinces specifically, nor in Quebec or Nunavut.

Those cross-Canada differences in abundance might be due to different patterns of erosion across the country. They may also reflect differences in the habitat preferences and distribution patterns of mammoths. For example, remains of the American mastodon, a proboscidean more commonly associated with woodland environments, are more common in Eastern Canada. By comparison, in the West and North, more open, grassland, steppe, or mixed habitats provided suitable environments for mammoths.

Diet

Direct evidence of mammoth diets comes from preserved stomach contents, dung and ancient DNA. Columbian mammoth diets primarily consisted of grasses and sedges with woody components. Woolly mammoth dung from a frozen carcass found in Russia indicates grasses and sedges as a major dietary component, with herbs, shrubs and mosses as supplements. Given their large body size, mammoths may have consumed 136–227 kg of vegetation daily.

Life History and Behaviour

Cave art and fossil finds indicate that mammoths, like living elephants, lived in matriarchal herds. The herds consisted of a dominant, older female, younger females and sexually immature male offspring. Mammoths were likely long-lived. Scientists estimate a 60-year lifespan for woolly mammoths and an 80-year lifespan for Columbian mammoths. Although mammoths shared many similarities to living elephants, woolly mammoths living at high latitudes in Canada may have weaned their young later than modern elephants. This was possibly an adaptation to long hours of winter darkness, which led to higher predation risk and poor forage.

Extinction

The extinction of mammoths and other large-bodied Ice Age animals continues to be a topic of scientific inquiry. Proposed causes of extinction include climate and environmental change, human predation, disease, and meteorite impact. Regardless of the cause, mammoths became extinct in Canada and most areas of their former range by the end of the Pleistocene epoch (about 10,000 years ago). Small, isolated populations lived into the middle portions of the Holocene epoch (between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago).