Russian word mammoth presumably comes from Mansi "mang ont" - "earth horn". From Russian this word came into many European languages, in particular into English (in the form of English. Mammoth).
Mammoths lived in the second half of the Pleistocene in Europe, North Asia and North America. Numerous mammoth bones have been found at human and ancient and late ancient Stone Age sites, and drawings and sculptures of mammoths made by prehistoric people have also been discovered. And paleontological and archaeological excavations in Kostenki, in Voronezh region, discovered the bones of hundreds of individuals, mammoths, from which our ancestors made their homes, and also possibly used their bones as fuel.
So, mammoth ( Mammuthus primegenius) is an extinct species of animal from the elephant family. One might say, the closest relative of the elephant.
In Siberia, as well as in Alaska, there are known cases of finding well-preserved permafrost mammoth corpses. And Oleg Kuvaev, in his famous book “Territory,” describes one geologist who even managed to knit himself a sweater from mammoth wool!
Although finds of mammoth bones, especially teeth, are known in the Moscow region, for example in Zaraysk, and even in Moscow! During excavation work on Kaluga Square in Moscow, many mammoth bones were found, and on the banks of the Moscow River, opposite Serebryany Bor, an almost complete skeleton of a mammoth was found in the peat deposits of an ancient lake! The skeleton of a mammoth was discovered in 2000 in the Istra district of the Moscow region, near the village of Korenki.
By the way, the canonical, rare name Mamant or Mammoth, or rather Mammoth, found in the list of Russian names, has nothing to do with mammoth, but comes from the Greek word “mamao”, which means “breastfed”. So neither the Mamontov family of merchants, nor the actor and anarchist Mammoth Dalsky had the slightest relation to mammoths!
In size, the mammoth usually did not exceed modern elephants, but had a more massive body, shorter legs, very long hair and long curved tusks (up to 4 m long and weighing up to 100 kg), located in the upper jaw; they most likely served the mammoths as a bulldozer scraper, helping to rake snow in winter to get food.
Distinct subspecies, e.g. North American subspecies Mammuthus emperor reached a height of 5.5 meters and a weight of 10-12 tons, i.e. were almost twice as heavy as African elephants. There were three subspecies of mammoths: the Asian group, which appeared more than 450 thousand years ago; an American group that appeared about 450 thousand years ago and an intercontinental group that migrated from North America about 300 thousand years ago.
Mammoth molars with numerous thin dentin-enamel plates were well adapted for chewing coarse plant food.
It is believed that mammoths went extinct about 10,000 years ago during the last ice age, and the reason for their extinction is not fully known. Some researchers believe that they died due to climate change, others believe that they were exterminated by humans.
The latter is unlikely. Let me give you an example. Even elephant hunting, so popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (and in some places still continues in Africa), with large caliber rifles and with explosive bullets it is still extremely dangerous, it is not so easy to kill a multi-ton giant, especially since elephants, like mammoths, are herd animals, most often roam in open spaces and although their eyesight is rather weak, their hearing is excellent. So it was extremely difficult to sneak up on them unnoticed! And the wounded elephant...
Although there is still a “scientifically based” legend that it was man who exterminated the mammoths, and it was believed that active hunting for mammoths was “the basis of the economy of the Upper Paleolithic population.” This is exactly what the popularizer of science, geologist R.K. thinks. Balandin...
Science may well enrich folklore, which is clearly illustrated by the appearance of the saying “extinct like mammoths.” A very bright event in the educational process of primary and high school, a story about mammoths who lived and lived peacefully, nibbling grass, not bothering anyone, and then one day they died out. However, recently more and more reports have been appearing, which, if true, will mean that to figuratively denote the expression “disappeared irrevocably from the face of the earth” we will have to look for a replacement for mammoths...
Large but peaceful
Mammoths are the closest relatives of modern African and Indian elephants, which is natural, since they belong to the same elephant family. Mammoths lived in Europe, Asia, North America and Asia for a total of almost 4.5 million years until about 5 thousand years ago (although there is scientific evidence that on Wrangel Island an autonomous population of mammoths lived until almost 3500 BC). Since the habitat of mammoths was very wide, from the coast of the Arctic Ocean to Africa and Mexico, several types of mammoths appeared, differing in size, intensity of fur, and the like.
The most big representatives mammoths reached a height of 5.5 meters and a weight of 12 tons, but even medium mammoths (height 4 meters, weight about 8 tons) significantly exceeded their current relatives, elephants. However, in their structure and way of life, mammoths have much in common with elephants. They stand out due to their size, coat, due to a generally more severe climate and especially in northern latitudes, slightly different body contours, shorter legs and long curved tusks. In terms of their lifestyle, mammoths, according to scientists, were also herbivores, living in groups controlled by the older female, forced to constantly move in search of food. There are several hypotheses regarding the reasons for the extinction of mammoths, which include changing of the climate(warming), and hunting by humans, and disease.
Or maybe mammoths never went extinct...
However, there is an opinion that if mammoths did not survive to this day (although there are supporters of this version), then at least they existed in the non-life. large quantities until the middle of the 20th century, when possible areas of their habitat, primarily the tundra of Siberia, began to be actively developed by humans. There is a number of evidence in favor of this opinion, dating back to the Middle Ages. In the 16th century, in the notes of several foreigners who visited Moscow, a mention appears of animals living in Siberia, among which an elephant covered with wool is described.
The source of such messages was the Cossacks who conquered Siberia, who, in turn, received this information from local peoples who called this animal “weight” or “whole”. However, it is quite difficult to separate the myths of the peoples of Siberia from reality, and there have been no reports from Russians who have seen mammoths. Rumors that even until the forties of the last century Soviet pilots, flying over the tundra and taiga, saw small herds of mammoths from the air, have no sources that could be verified. As a result, at the end of the nineties, a completely extreme version appeared that mammoths are still alive, but have only switched to a semi-aquatic lifestyle - in winter, when the temperature is comfortably low for them, they live on land, and in the summer season they live in rivers , since the water temperature is lower than the air temperature. Official science does not comment on such considerations as completely fantastic, but supporters of this version do not let up, drawing attention to the fact that elephants, close relatives of mammoths, are remarkable swimmers.
There are chances to pet a live baby mammoth
Oddly enough, from a scientific point of view, there is a much better chance of reviving mammoths thousands of years after their disappearance than of meeting a living mammoth. Discussions about the possible cloning of mammoths from the genetic material found in their remains have been going on since the very beginning of the 2000s, from the moment the cloning of living organisms became a fact. Work in this direction is being carried out quite actively by several groups of specialists, and Japanese experts, working in close contact with scientists from Yakutia, have taken on this particularly actively. It is noteworthy that most scientists are extremely skeptical about the possibility of cloning a mammoth - since, according to general scientific data, the DNA of a living organism is destroyed shortly after its death. When we are talking about DNA, which is several thousand years old, this means a radical change in the chemical structure of the molecules, which makes their restoration impossible. That is, it’s the same as disassembling a certain mechanism into parts - together it will be the same machine, only it is not able to work.
However, Japanese scientists do not give up - for example, in 2008 they managed to clone a mouse that died 16 years before conducting an experiment with its DNA.
Under these conditions, in 2011, when a more or less intact DNA molecule was discovered in the remains of a mammoth in Yakutia, Japanese experts announced that they would need five to six years to prepare the DNA for cloning, after which it would fertilize the egg of a female elephant . True, even if the experiment is successful, which most scientists still do not believe in, it will be difficult to say whose genetic material will be more in the clone, a mammoth or an elephant. In addition, there immediately arises a series problematic issues related to the possible restoration of the mammoth population. Firstly, this means the risk of the emergence of ancient viruses that “slept” in the mammoth’s DNA, and when it is cloned, they will come to life and can be dangerous not only for animals, but also for people who do not have immunity to this infection. Secondly, we need to look for a natural habitat for mammoths, which in a difficult environmental situation modern world with him
global warming
pretty hard. Thirdly, with the appearance of such a large animal that consumes huge amounts of plant food, there is a risk of changing the ecological balance with unpredictable consequences. Finally, the successful cloning of a complex animal that died many thousands of years ago will invariably lead to a new round of discussion about the possibility of cloning deceased people, which is already intruding on the fundamental ethical foundations of human life.
Why did mammoths become extinct?
The extinction of certain animal species is not uncommon on Earth: dinosaurs became extinct, and in general 99% of all animal species that ever existed have now disappeared. But there is a special, albeit difficult to explain, interest in mammoths and the problem of their extinction. Perhaps interest in the circumstances and causes of the death of mammoths is fueled by increased talk about the possibility of recreating them through cloning. Or maybe the factor of the increased ecological culture of society, which wants to know whether the ancestors of people exterminated the mammoths, played a role here. Climate change version lasted more than a hundred thousand years and ended approximately 10-12 thousand years ago, with the warming trend beginning about 20 thousand years ago. By that time, a climate had been established over a significant part of the Earth, to which mammoths were able to adapt remarkably well. Scientists calculated that the most comfortable climatic niche for mammoths were areas where average temperature coldest month of the year was “minus 30” degrees Celsius, the average temperature of the warm month year was “plus 14-15” degrees, and the annual precipitation rate was at 240 mm. After the start of warming, areas with such conditions became fewer and fewer, which reduced the habitat of mammoths.
It's not even that the woolly mammoths were too hot. Much more important was the change in the food supply. Over a hundred thousand years of being in a cold climate, mammoths began to specialize in very specific types of plants - for example, willow plants, which were adapted to grow and spread precisely in such conditions, containing many nutrients and beneficial substances. When the climate changed, willow plants, which grew in large numbers in these natural climatic zones, and they themselves began to feel worse, and they were competed by more heat-loving plants, for example, conifers. As a result, the mammoths lost their main source of food and simply did not have time to adapt to a different diet. True, this theory cannot explain that other animals, like musk oxen, in this situation were able to adapt to new conditions and still live.
Version about man hunting mammoths
Historically, even before science established and proved climate fluctuations in the distant past, the first version of the reasons for the disappearance of mammoths was human factor. At that moment it seemed logical, especially since this theory was put forward primarily by European scientists who were not familiar with the practice of hunting Indian elephants, smaller relatives of mammoths.
The scheme looks like this: at the border of the Ice Age, when climatic conditions began to improve for people, the human population began to grow. This necessitated an increase in supplies of food, clothing, and building materials. All this - meat, skins, bones - could be provided by mammoths. Using their intelligence, ability for abstract thinking and using the natural susceptibility of mammoths to panic, people used mass, driven types of hunting, which led to the death of a large number of mammoths. The increase in food and economic resources spurred a demographic boom among primitive people; mammoths began to be hunted even more often and on a larger scale - and as a result, over several thousand years, all mammoths were exterminated.
Today, the version that people are primarily responsible for the extinction of mammoths is considered unlikely. Firstly, scientists doubt that the population of humanity at that time was such that it made it possible to destroy mammoths over a vast territory from Europe to Mexico. Secondly, it turned out that hunting mammoths is much more complicated than one could imagine. By analogy with elephants, which are difficult to hunt and firearms, angry mammoths at the moment of danger were hardly easy prey, and the level of tools available to people at that time (spears and arrows with stone tips) made the mass destruction of these giants impossible. Thirdly, the predominant role of mammoths in the human diet has not been proven - it was much easier to hunt smaller game, and the abundance of mammoth bones at human sites is explained by the collection of the remains of animals that died of natural causes.
Version about a mysterious illness
There is also an opinion that the mammoths could have been destroyed by their own health. Scientists do not rule out that at the end of the Ice Age there was a major outbreak of an unknown disease, from which the mammoth population dropped to catastrophically low levels. Moreover, it is possible that the same disease also affected other species of animals of that time, which turned out to be more resistant to it and, unlike mammoths, were able to survive it. Some experts are even inclined to call this disease - it could be a flu virus that mammoths somehow became infected with through contact with people. And since mammoths did not have immunity against this virus, this led to their extinction.
An original theory was also put forward based on archaeological finds in Siberia, in Kemerovo region. A large number of mammoth bones were found there, which were affected by a specific disease, leading to calcium deficiency and increased bone fragility. Perhaps a change in the food supply led to a deficiency of minerals in the mammoths’ menu, causing them to become less active in reproduction and more susceptible to fatal injuries. Actually everything larger number modern scientists are inclined to accept a combined version of the reasons for the extinction of mammoths: changing of the climate led to a reduction in areas suitable for mammoths, a decreased population due to disease or a change in diet became more available as prey, and human hunters could finish off the last remnants of the once numerous mammoths.
Hunting for mammoths: heroism, legend or mass murder?
Modern people who receive food in supermarkets in exchange for the money they earn, for the most part have no idea how difficult and dangerous hunting was for our not so civilized ancestors. And what could be more dangerous than hunting the largest land animal, which was the mammoth during the primitive history of Homo sapiens? And besides the danger factor, hunting for mammoths has many interesting aspects.
The debate continues: are mammoths extinct because of people or not?
In science, hunting for mammoths is considered, first of all, in the light of resolving the issue of the causes of the extinction of these animals. Since the hunt for mammoths by the increasing number of humanity is one of the main options among the hypotheses about the disappearance of these furry relatives of elephants. And this issue is not completely clear. Initially, the extermination of mammoths by people was considered as the main version - the Ice Age was ending, the climate was becoming milder, living conditions for people were becoming more comfortable, the human population was growing, which means that the need for food and other useful “spare parts” that could be obtained from mammoths was also growing. .
Then, taking into account new scientific data, the version was adjusted and currently the most widespread opinion is that mammoths became extinct as a result of a combination of factors, among which human factors were present, but it was not the main one. Ten to twelve thousand years ago ended glacial period, and warming occurred quite quickly, which led to a natural reduction in the habitat of mammoths accustomed to the cold. In addition, many plants that were part of the mammoth’s diet disappeared and were now replaced by more heat-loving competitors. In addition, it is very likely that there was an epidemic of some kind of disease. All this reduced the mammoth population and weakened it, and hunting by people became only an additional circumstance of the gradual disappearance of these animals.
However, recently a number of experts have returned to the hypothesis that people are still to blame for the extinction of mammoths. So far, most scientists do not share this version, which is that people used driven hunting methods, which killed many more animals than humanity needed. The basis for this version is the huge number of mammoth bones discovered at the sites of primitive people. Critics argue that most of these are the collected bones of already dead animals.
Who hunted mammoths and why?
The question of who hunted mammoths and why, at first glance, seems obvious and even stupid - of course, people hunted mammoths and they did it for meat and animal skins. But it's not that simple. The fact is that hunting mammoths, even taking into account the possibility of using driven hunting (setting fire to the steppe and the like), was a dangerous and difficult task. In addition to the fact that it was necessary to drive the mammoth, it was also necessary to kill it. The task itself of killing an animal whose average height was four meters, weighed about eight tons, and whose tusks reached several meters in length, is a difficult task. Especially if we remember that a person of that time had no other weapons except spears and arrows with stone tips, which were not easy to reach the skin of a mammoth - since the length of its coarse wool was half a meter, often more.
Therefore it is unlikely primitive times There could have been tribes of people who specialized in hunting mammoths. Most likely, these were isolated cases that occurred during periods when the seasonal migration routes of mammoths passed close to human habitats. Moreover, there were plenty of other animals, the hunting of which was associated with less danger (for example, huge herds of bison). If it was possible to kill one or more mammoths, their meat was stored for future use, which was quite possible in a cold climate and frozen soil in which pits could be dug to store supplies for the winter. As for the large number of mammoth bones discovered in human sites, it is logical to assume that people collected the bones of deceased mammoths. Large bones served as the main building material for dwellings in those natural areas where wood was scarce; smaller ones were used to make all kinds of tools.
Hunting is a dangerous business
There are several assumptions regarding what mammoth hunting looked like in practice. First of all, this is the same driven hunt, when, as a result of some source of panic for mammoths (fire, a large group of people, and so on), the animals were driven either into a specially designed trap, or to a natural cliff, from which the mammoth fell and was broken. True, this option does not really correspond to the practice of hunting elephants, relatives of mammoths. Elephants, although animals susceptible to panic, however, in conditions where they have the opportunity to attack the offender or there is no way to retreat, become furious and attack themselves. It is difficult to judge what the behavior of mammoths was in such situations, but it is unlikely that they were radically different.
There is an assumption that hunting mammoths was a process extended over time. So, several hunters got as close as possible to the animals and, throwing spears from a distance, inflicted several wounds on the mammoth. Then, for several days, people followed the herd of mammoths, waiting for the moment when the animal, weakened by loss of blood, would lag behind its relatives. And then the mammoth achieved it from a closer distance.
An option is also proposed, which is based on a rather original idea that mammoths hibernated for a certain period of time. Allegedly, they could not constantly migrate; at some point they had to wait out a period when there was no food at all, and then they huddled in groups and fell asleep. And it was here, according to this version, that people came and, as they say, took the mammoths “lukewarm.” True, this option of hunting mammoths is not supported by anything other than assumptions.
Alexander Babitsky
When did mammoths go extinct? If they are extinct.
V.Lukyanov
Sparing lines from the reference book: “...A now extinct mammal of the elephant family that lived in the second half of the Pleistocene in Eurasia and North America. They reached a height of 5.5 meters and a body weight of 10-12 tons. The reasons for the extinction are not fully known, although it is believed that they died as a result of climate change and the incessant hunting of them by human tribes. Mammoths disappeared from the face of the Earth about one and a half ten thousand years ago..."
For our ancestors, they were as commonplace as dogs, cats, horses and cows in our time... Can you imagine the world of the next century without dogs and cats?! Likewise, our century would have seemed more than strange to our distant ancestors if they had been told that we do not have mammoths.
Mammoth lived
The scientific world unanimously classifies the mammoth as a long-extinct animal. None of the biologists have yet brought back the skin of a “freshly killed” mammoth from northern expeditions, therefore, it does not exist. The only question for scientists is: as a result of what cataclysms mammoths became extinct. There are two main versions: mammoths were either eaten by people, or they were killed by the climate (cold). To be honest, if I weren't an animal rights activist, I would have liked the first version better.
At the beginning of the last century, the most popular hypothesis was about the amazing dexterity of primitive hunters who specialized exclusively in eating mammoths. There is no doubt that people ate mammoths; sites may indicate this primitive man with remains of mammoth bone. It is even possible that, by hunting large animals, man learned the collective organization of labor and acquired speech, so we owe to mammoths not only that we ate them, but also everything human that is in us.
On a fresco in Moscow Historical Museum depicts the ease with which people kill mammoths with large stones. The victory of our mind over the primitive mountain of muscles pleases our pride.
But it’s hard to believe in the effectiveness and success of such a hunt; just remember that both Indian and African elephants Until quite recently, they absolutely calmly dealt with much better armed people and kept them at a respectful distance from themselves. Asian hunters generally considered it unprofitable to eat an elephant - there is a lot of hassle, but little benefit, it is much more profitable to take a young and stupid elephant by cunning, train it and use it for hard work as a pet and a powerful mechanism that does not require spare parts.
If ancient people had been able to catch live mammoths, they would have tamed them and used them for farming, because it is stupid to simply eat what modern Asian elephant drivers consider the greatest wealth (“the goose that lays the golden eggs”). Why hunt powerful thugs if there was an abundance of various game around?
Mammoth meat also ended up on the dinner table - ancient people did not disdain rotten meat and carrion, especially since they also came across fresh bodies of those who died from cold and accidents. And even without eating mammoths, ancient man would hardly have passed by free mammoth bone, which was so convenient to use on the farm (besides relatively light tusks and heavy stones, there were no other durable building materials at that time).
So, to the joy of the “greens,” most likely mammoths did not become extinct because of people. Then – the climate?
At the end of the 20th century, the most popular version was about a sharp climate change in Siberia and Canada, as a result of which large northern herbivorous mammals (mammoth, woolly rhinoceros) were deprived of their usual food and quickly died out. However, for some reason, these changes did not affect their contemporary - the musk ox (musk ox), which not only survived, but to this day does not stop reproducing, despite any climatic disasters.
Such considerations make cryptozoologists doubt the complete extinction of mammoths.
Is the mammoth alive?
Foreigners who visited Muscovy wrote about the existence of mammoths. Geographer Qian in his notes in 188-155 BC. wrote: “... among the animals there are... huge boars, northern elephants in bristles and northern rhinoceroses genus.”
In the 16th century, the ambassador of the Austrian Emperor Sigismund Herberstein wrote in his “Notes on Muscovy”: “In Siberia... there is a great variety of birds and various animals, such as, for example, sables, martens, beavers, stoats, squirrels... In addition, weight. In the same way, polar bears, wolves, hares”... The weight, or the whole thing, of this animal, according to the description, resembles the same mammoth. Already at the beginning of the 20th century, among the Kalym Khanty, a strange animal, the mammoth pike, called “the whole,” was covered with thick long hair and had big horns. Sometimes “everyone” started such a fuss that the ice on the lakes broke with a terrible roar...
Ermak's warriors, who conquered Siberia, also met huge hairy elephants in the forests.
Both the Ob Ugrians and the Siberian Tatars described the hairy elephant in detail: “The mammoth, by its nature, is a meek and peace-loving animal, and affectionate towards people; when meeting a person, the mammoth does not attack him.”
The notes of cryptozoologist M. Bykova also contain information about modern encounters with mammoths. On one of the rivers Western Siberia several boats with local residents slowly floated down the river. Suddenly, a huge body, three meters high, covered with long hair, rose from the water. Raising first one leg and then the other, it began to beat them on the water. Then it swayed on the waves and dived into the water...
Pilots flying over the taiga in the 40s of the last century talked about huge shaggy animals seen from above...
Of course, it would be difficult for a mammoth to survive in the harsh Siberian winters. In the 1990s Russian press For the first time, a version appeared that mammoths, to protect themselves from the cold, could well have switched... to a semi-aquatic lifestyle! With this lifestyle, large animals are able to withstand even 60-70 degree frost - if, like walruses, they hide in water that has a temperature not lower than zero. Moreover, the larger the animal, the more comfortable it will feel in the water. What could be bigger on earth than a mammoth? The only question is how comfortable will a mammoth feel in the water?
Better than we can think of! The mammoth swims well; its closest relatives, elephants, as it turned out relatively recently, are excellent swimmers, sometimes swimming tens of kilometers into the sea. And distant relatives of mammoths - the famous sea sirens - retained characteristics common to elephants: pectoral mammary glands, change of molars throughout life and tusk-like incisors.
And elephants have also retained some of the properties of marine animals; they have the ability to produce and hear infrasounds below the sensitivity threshold of the human ear (only marine animals, such as whales, have such abilities). Moreover, Australian zoologist Anne Gate, who studied elephant embryos at the University of Melbourne, came to the conclusion that trunks appeared much earlier than is commonly believed. E. Gate is convinced that elephants were once amphibians...
All this is so convincing that it’s surprising - why don’t we still see mammoths frolicking in the water in the Moscow River? Perhaps, if by mistake the mammoths degenerated, then it is worth reviving their tribe again? Now we won’t let them go to waste.
The mammoth will live!?
Russia is the birthplace of elephants, I say this completely without irony. If anyone doubts that the first (still hairy) elephants were once found on the territory of what is now Siberia, then perhaps in time they will no longer have anything to cover them with. If huge hairy elephants are to be reborn anywhere, it will be in Russian Siberia.
The idea of artificially breeding mammoths, of course, first appeared as a fantastic story on the pages of the popular magazine “Technology for Youth.” But, as you know, a particularly lazy reader does not bother to read the postscript itself stating that this is fantasy, and takes everything he reads as a guide to action.
At the end of the 90s of the last century, after the first successful cloning experiments, reports appeared about a project to create hypothetical breeding animals that were planned to be created artificially using genetic engineering and other achievements modern sciences. 1996, summer - a scientific expedition to Siberia was formed in Japan with the goal of finding the body of a male mammoth in a permafrost layer in Russia in the “mammoth cemetery”, then isolating mammoth sperm with an undestroyed DNA molecule, and using the resulting material to fertilize a female elephant.
It was assumed that the emerging baby would be 2/3 a typical mammoth and only a third an elephant. Maybe then it will be possible to create a whole colony of new (old) animals, almost entirely similar to those that became extinct in Siberia just a few thousand years ago. So, task number one is to find a fresh mammoth carcass.
The remains of a mammoth were first found in the permafrost of Siberia in 1798. Since then, several hundred such finds have been made. In the north (in Yakutia, Kolyma, Chukotka, Alaska) bones, tusks and even almost whole carcasses, sometimes untouched by rot, are often found. Most often, such finds occur during gold mining operations, when large layers of earth and peat are removed with excavators.
Mammoth corpses have also been found relatively well preserved in permafrost. Until now, northern elephants have been extracted from the soil using the same primitive method. They were washed out of the frozen ground hot water. Why was it not possible to preserve everything in its original form? hairline, skin, and internal organs suffered.
Mammoth cemeteries or mammoth nurseries?
In the 1996 season, the Russian-Japanese expedition failed to find a suitable candidate for the “father” of the future mammoth elephant... Members of our “Cosmopoisk” also spent more than a year searching for a suitable mammoth carcass. The hope of finding a specimen of the required freshness was fueled by the relatively recent history of a decently preserved specimen of “Dima’s baby mammoth,” discovered by an excavator operator while clearing a gold-bearing layer near Susuman in the Magadan region.
Later, the cosmopoiskovsky workers were in these parts, questioning the gold miners about the same “Dima No. 2”... Soon the discovery of the seemingly necessary sample was secretly told at one of the mines, but... the geneticists were not satisfied this time either.
1997, July 29 - a group of department specialists biological resources The Ministry of Nature Protection of Yakutia and the local mammoth museum flew to the Ustya-Yanovsky district, where hunters found the remains of a mammoth on the banks of the Maksu-Nuoka River.
The huge hairy elephant lost its tusks and part of its head, but its carcass rested in the icy shackles of permafrost. The last circumstance is very important, because Japanese scientists need the most intact torso with genitals... And again, scientists rejected the found fossil.
In the late 90s of the 20th century, an international research expedition was the first in the world to extract a mammoth completely intact. The first to discover the carcass of a fossil mastodon was a Russian expedition member named Zharkov. This surname was assigned to the mammoth. The extraction technology was quite complex and labor-intensive. During excavations, a whole team of workers created a stable microclimate there; the temperature was no higher or lower than minus 15 degrees.
Zharkov (mammoth) himself weighed 4 tons, but together with the parallelepiped of ice and soil in which it was embedded and with which it was removed, as much as 23 tons. All this was tied to a Mi-26 helicopter, which pulled the mammoth out of the permafrost... The first sample of the mammoth's DNA was sent for research.
In 1999-2000, attempts to search for mammoth carcasses continued. Once we received a message about the discovery of a “very fresh” carcass too late. While we phoned the Japanese, while we found money for the trip, while we agreed with the military about help with transportation by air, like fresh mammoth meat... we ate it! We were ahead of businessmen who made good money by satisfying the lust of gourmets by flying French tourists and professional chef straight to Siberia...
So the Kosmopoisk Association still appeals to all hunters and artel workers not only with the old request “If you see it, let us know!”, but also with the new one - “Don’t eat!”...
Whether search engines will be able to find and scientists will be able to isolate mammoth sperm and thereby begin an experiment - only time will tell. And if the hopes of Russian, Yakut, and Japanese researchers come true, humanity may soon witness a sensational result of the experiment.
Siberian roots Nesen?
There is another argument in favor of the existence of mammoths in the North. In descriptions of eyewitnesses of the appearance of monsters like Nesen on the surface of lakes, the following details often appear: a long flexible neck, and behind it a body (back?) rising above the water. Supporters of the aquatic existence of mammoths claim that in reality this is a high-raised trunk and head of a mammoth! Beautiful version! Or, as skeptics would say, an amazing legend...
In fact, it is much simpler to assume that what lurked in the water was not plesiosaurs and other reptiles of the Cretaceous period, who lived 60-75 million years ago, but mammoths, who lived “only” tens of thousands of years, and maybe just a few centuries ago. It has already been written above whether mammoths are able to survive in cold climates in cold water. Of course they can!
And if the heads of plesiosaurs appeared only in Siberian reservoirs (but no, they are also seen in relatively warm climates in England, Ireland, America and even Africa), then I would be the first to support the version of waterfowl mammoths mistaken for lizards. But why would a mammoth, assuming that it survived in Africa, hide under water there too?! And if mammoths come ashore at least occasionally, then why are they not seen in densely populated Scotland and Ireland? Or – in Siberia there are mammoths, but in Africa there are no mammoths?
True, there is one more “but” in defense of the relationship between Nesen and the prehistoric elephant. The elusive mammoths and the elusive water monsters have one more common property that makes them related. Both of them have all the signs of ghostly chronomirages.
Mammoth chronomirages?
So, many stories that only 100-200-300 years ago mammoths were seen in the lost corners of the taiga have not yet been confirmed in practice. It is clear that there are no traces of mammoths on earth, but to this day it is still unclear whether the mammoth has died out, basking in the rays of posthumous glory, or whether it is bathing in the icy Siberian water, remaining unknown. What if... neither one nor the other?
How everything is simplified if we assume that mammoths really went extinct, but occasionally - when the necessary physical conditions and the emotional state of observers are created for this - they appear to us in all their glory. How real are they at such moments? No more real than the warriors of the Napoleonic wars, or plesiosaurs, or starship pilots of the 25th century - all of them already or do not yet exist. Or they exist, but not in our space-time reality, being displayed in us in approximately the same way as a television image becomes reality for a room with a TV in it.
From the point of view of a savage who saw television for the first time, a mammoth on a color screen is real, but very soon wild man will be convinced that hunting for a moving image of game will be a complete fiasco. We are the new savages in front of a huge natural “TV”, showing us images that have not been around for a long time. existing monsters?
V. Chernobrov
70 years ago, on May 8, 1949, in Berlin's Treptower Park, the grand opening of the monument to soldiers took place Soviet army, who died a heroic death during the storming of the capital of the Third Reich. Izvestia remembers how it was
In Europe there are hundreds of monuments to Russian soldiers-liberators - both from the Napoleonic era and from the times of the world wars. The most famous and, perhaps, the most expressive of them stands in Berlin, in Treptower Park.
He is recognizable at first sight - a Red Army soldier with a girl in his arms, trampling on a broken swastika - a symbol of defeated fascism. A soldier who endured the main hardships of World War II and won peace for Europe. One can speak pompously about his feat, but the sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich, who saw the war through the eyes of a soldier and an officer, created an unpretentious, humane image of a fighter.
During the Great Patriotic War, monumental art was treated with special attention. After the liberation of Novgorod in January 1944, our soldiers saw fragments of the “Millennium of Russia” monument in the ancient Detinets. Retreating, the Nazis blew it up. Restoration work began without delay - and the multi-figure composition was restored long before the Victory, by November 1944. Because symbols during war are as important as guns.
Voroshilov's plan
The most suitable place for the military burial was chosen - the oldest public park in the German capital. There was already a Soviet war memorial in Berlin - in the Greater Tiergarten. But the most majestic Soviet army memorial located outside our country was Treptow Park.
The idea of creating the memorial belonged to Klim Voroshilov. The "First Red Officer" knew that thousands were buried there Soviet soldiers who fell in the battle for Berlin, and proposed to adequately honor the memory of the heroes of the last battles of the great war.
However, initially it was not an ordinary soldier who had to stand on the pedestal, but Joseph Stalin personally. The Generalissimo would tower over Berlin with a globe in his hands - a symbol of the saved world. The sculptor Yevgeny Vuchetich saw the future memorial roughly this way in 1946, when the military council of the group of Soviet occupation forces in Germany announced a competition for the design of the Berlin monument to the liberating soldiers.
Vuchetich was a soldier himself. Not the rear ones, but the real ones. He was carried out half-dead from the last battle. Due to the consequences of the concussion, his speech changed for the rest of his life. All his life after that, he imprinted in stone and bronze the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War. Vuchetich was sometimes accused of gigantomania. He really thought big, although he also knew a lot about chamber sculpture. The sculptor understood the Great Patriotic War as a confrontation on a universal scale - and over the course of several decades he created a monumental epic of our time. He served the memory of the front-line feat with the same self-forgetfulness with which the ancient icon painters served God, and the artists of the Renaissance served the idea of the greatness of man.
Vuchetich got down to business after a conversation with Voroshilov. But the “Stalin-centric” concept of the monument did not inspire him.
I felt dissatisfied. We need to look for another solution. And then I remembered the Soviet soldiers who, during the storming of Berlin, carried German children out of the fire zone. He rushed to Berlin, visited the soldiers, met with the heroes, made sketches and hundreds of photographs - and a new decision, his own, matured, the sculptor recalled.
Vuchetich was not an opponent of Stalin. But as a true artist, he was afraid to fall under the yoke of a template. Vuchetich understood in his heart that the main hero of the war was still a soldier, one of the millions of fallen and survivors who marched from Stalingrad and Moscow to Prague and Berlin. Wounded, buried in a foreign land, but undefeated.
As it turned out, Stalin understood this too. But the main authors of the monument were the fighters themselves, the heroes of the last battles.
Cutting the chains
U Soviet fighters there were many reasons for revenge. But few of them went to the extent of blind revenge - and the punishment for such was severe. The monument was supposed to show: the Soviet soldier did not reach Berlin in order to bring Germany to its knees and enslave the German people. He has a different goal - to destroy Nazism and end the war.
On April 30, 1945, Guard Sergeant Nikolai Masalov, in the midst of a battle on the banks of the Landwehr Canal, heard a child scream.
"Under the bridge I saw three year old girl, sitting next to her murdered mother. The baby had blond hair that was slightly curly at the forehead. She kept tugging at her mother’s belt and calling: “Mutter, mutter!” There is no time to think here. I grab the girl and back. And how she will scream! As I walk, I persuade her this way and that: shut up, they say, otherwise you will open me.
Here the Nazis really started firing. Thanks to our people - they helped us out, they opened fire from all guns,” said Masalov. He survived and received the Order of Glory, III degree, for his exploits in the Berlin battles. Marshal Vasily Chuikov wrote about his heroism in his memoirs. The sergeant met Vuchetich, who even made sketches of him.
But Masalov was not alone. A similar feat was accomplished by Minsk resident Trifon Andreevich Lukyanovich. His wife and daughters died under German bombs. Father, mother and sister were executed by the occupiers for their connection with the partisans. Lukyanovich fought in Stalingrad, was wounded more than once, he was declared unfit for army service, but the sergeant returned to the front by hook or by crook. At the end of April 1945, he took part in battles in the western part of Berlin - on Eisenstrasse, near Treptower Park. During the battle, I heard a child crying and rushed across the road towards the destroyed house.
The writer and military correspondent of Pravda Boris Polevoy, a witness to the feat, recalled: “Then we saw him with a child in his arms. He sat under the protection of the rubble of the wall, pondering what he should do next. Then he lay down and, holding the child, moved back. But now it was difficult for him to move on his belly. The burden made it difficult to crawl on my elbows. Every now and then he would lie down on the asphalt and calm down, but after resting, he would move on. Now he was close, and it was clear that he was covered in sweat, his hair, wet, was getting into his eyes, and he couldn’t even throw it away, because both hands were occupied.”
And then a German sniper’s bullet stopped his path. The girl clutched her tunic, wet with sweat. Lukyanovich managed to transfer it into the reliable hands of his comrades. The girl survived and remembered her savior for the rest of her life. And Trifon Andreevich died a few days later. The bullet broke the artery, the wound turned out to be fatal.
And there were many such feats in the battles for Berlin! In the words of Tvardovsky, “there is always a guy like this in every company, and in every platoon.” Wherever the battles took place, each of them defended their homeland. And - humanity, which they tried to eradicate in the “thousand-year Reich”.
Vuchetich knew about both Masalov and Lukyanovich. He created a generalized image of a soldier saving a child. A soldier who defended both his country and the future of Germany.
Nowadays, when in the West, and sometimes here too, legends about the “atrocities of the Soviet occupiers” in Germany are circulated, it is three times important to remember these exploits. It’s a shame that we are giving way to falsifiers, and the voice historical truth in such a politicized context it sounds increasingly quieter.
Filmmakers could remind us of the feat and philanthropy of those who fought for Berlin. You just need not only talent and tact, but also a subtle understanding of that time, that generation. So that the tunics would not look like they were in a fashion show, but that the eyes would show both the pain and the glory of that war. To achieve a full-fledged artistic embodiment of the feat.
70 years ago, Vuchetich and his constant collaborator, Moscow architect Yakov Belopolsky, succeeded. Together they worked on the monument to General Mikhail Efremov in Vyazma, and on the famous Stalingrad monuments. Working with such a wayward artistic nature as Vuchetich was not easy, but their duet of sculptor and architect turned out to be one of the most fruitful in our art.
And after the death of Vuchetich, together with the sculptor Lev Golovnitsky, he created the gigantic monument “Rear to Front” in Magnitogorsk. A Ural worker hands a huge sword to a warrior - the Sword of Victory.
Then this sword will be picked up by the Motherland, who led the soldiers in Stalingrad, and in Berlin the soldier-liberator will wearily lower it. This is how the heroic triptych of the Great Patriotic War, united by the image of the sword of Victory, turned out. This monument was opened in 1979, it also celebrates its 40th anniversary. It was then that Vuchetich’s plan was fully realized.
This is the kind of monument we need...
In his work on the soldier from Treptow Park, Vuchetich found his own style - at the intersection of trench realism and high symbolism. But at first, he assumed that this monument would be erected somewhere in the outskirts of the park, and that the grandiose figure of the Generalissimo would stand in the center of the composition.
About 30 projects were presented at the competition. Vuchetich proposed two compositions: a leader of nations with a globe, which symbolized “the world saved,” and a soldier with a girl, who was perceived as a spare, additional option.
This story can be found in many retellings. Puffing on his pipe, Stalin approaches the statue and asks the sculptor: “Aren’t you tired of this one with the mustache?” And then he takes a closer look at the model of the “Soldier-Liberator” and suddenly says: “This is the kind of monument we need!”
This is, perhaps, one of the “days of bygone jokes.” The reliability of this dialogue is questionable. One thing is indisputable: Stalin did not want his bronze statue to tower over the memorial cemetery, and realized that a soldier “with a rescued girl in his arms” is an image for all times that will evoke both sympathy and pride.
The Generalissimo made only one serious editorial change to the original “soldier’s” draft. Vuchetich’s soldier, as expected, was armed with a machine gun. Stalin proposed replacing this part with a sword. That is, he proposed to supplement the realistic monument with epic symbolism. It was not customary, and indeed impossible, to argue with the leader. But Stalin seemed to have guessed the intentions of the sculptor himself. He was attracted by the images of Russian knights. Huge sword- a simple but capacious symbol that evokes associations with the distant past, with the very essence of history.
To be remembered
The monument was built by the whole world - together with the Germans, under the leadership of military engineers of the Red Army. But there was not enough granite and marble. Pieces of precious building material found among the ruins of Berlin. The matter became heated when it was possible to discover a secret warehouse of granite intended for the monument to the victory over Russia, which Hitler dreamed of. Stone was brought to this warehouse from all over Europe.
In 1949, there was no sign of agreement among the former Big Three allies. Germany became the scene of the Cold War. On May 8, on the eve of Victory Day, festive fireworks sounded in Berlin. On that day, a memorial was opened in Treptow Park. Not only for Soviet soldiers, but for all German anti-fascists it was a real triumph.
The point is not only in the visual triumph over inhuman ideology, not only in the political presence of the Soviet Union in Germany. It's also a matter of aesthetics. Many recognized that this monument is one of the most beautiful in Berlin. Its silhouette rises impressively against the background of the Berlin sky, and the park landscape enhances the impression of the ensemble.
The military commandant of Berlin, General Alexander Kotikov, made a speech that was reprinted by almost all communist newspapers in the world: “This monument in the center of Europe, in Berlin, will constantly remind the peoples of the world when, how and at what cost the Victory was won, the salvation of our Fatherland, the salvation lives of present and future generations of humanity." Kotikov had a direct connection to the monument: his daughter Svetlana, a future actress, posed for the sculptor in the image of a German girl.
Vuchetich created a mournful, but at the same time life-affirming symphony of stone and bronze. On the way to the “Soldier” we see granite banners at half-mast, sculptures of kneeling soldiers and a grieving mother. Russian weeping birches grow next to the statues. In the center of this ensemble is a burial mound, on the mound is a pantheon, and from it grows a monument to a soldier. Inscriptions in Russian and German: “Eternal glory to the soldiers of the Soviet army who gave their lives in the struggle for the liberation of mankind.”
The design of the Hall of Memory, opened above the mound, set the tone for many museums of the Great Patriotic War - right up to the complex on Poklonnaya Hill. The mosaic - a procession of mourners, the Order of Victory on the ceiling, a book of memory in a golden casket containing the names of all those killed in the battle for Berlin - all this has been sacredly preserved for 70 years. The Germans also do not erase Stalin’s quotes, of which there are many in Treptow Park. On the walls of the Hall of Memory is inscribed: “Nowadays everyone recognizes that the Soviet people, with their selfless struggle, saved the civilization of Europe from the fascist pogromists. This is the great merit of the Soviet people to the history of mankind.”
A model of the legendary sculpture now stands in the city of Serpukhov, and its smaller copies are in Vereya, Tver and Sovetsk. The image of the soldier-liberator can be seen on medals and coins, on posters and postage stamps. It is recognizable, it still evokes emotions.
This monument remains a symbol of Victory. He - like a sentry of a conquered world - reminds us of the victims and heroes of the war, which in our country affected every family. Treptower Park gives us hope that the memory of the heroes of the Great Patriotic War belongs not only to our country.
Arseniy Zamostyanov
Although intact areas of soft tissue were often found in the carcasses of these giants, no cells with intact nuclei were preserved in them. The first glimmer of hope appeared in 2008, when a group of Russian geneticists led by Evgeniy Rogalev was able to decipher the DNA sequence of mitochondria taken from mammoth wool. Mitochondria are organelles, small intracellular “power plants” that provide the cell with energy. They have their own genome - not from many chromosomes, as in the cell nucleus, but a very small one, from one circular DNA molecule. Deciphering the genetic code of mitochondria can tell us a lot of interesting things about how mammoths evolved, but cloning mitochondrial DNA alone is not enough.
Meanwhile, the search for mammoths with intact cell nuclei continued. Frozen mammoths are found mainly in Yakutia. Scientists from the Yakut Institute of Applied Ecology of the North-Eastern North have faith in success federal university(NEFU) was so great that in 2012 they signed a project on joint research in the field of molecular genetics of mammoths with the Korean biotechnology research foundation Sooam Biotech. The project received a very promising name - “Revival of the Mammoth”. The whole idea made sense only in one case: if scientists could find the material necessary for cloning, that is, cells with intact nuclei.
If at least one such cell is obtained, South Korean professor Hwang Woo Seok will take up the matter - a figure as famous as he is dubious. In 2005, Hwang Woo Seok was the first to clone a dog and raise a healthy clone Afghan hound puppy (dogs are now successfully cloned for commercial purposes, largely thanks to his work). But soon he made an even more sensational statement - that he had succeeded in cloning human stem cells, which are the key to rejuvenating the body and treating many diseases. Grants poured in for the professor, but alas, he was soon exposed. Stem cell cloning turned out to be a lie, some of the results were falsified, and he borrowed others from other people's works without giving references. The scientist admitted to deception and was fired from Seoul National University in 2007, and later sentenced to two years in prison for fraud. Government South Korea stopped financial support for his experiments and banned him from participating in stem cell research.
Is it possible to entrust the cloning of a mammoth to a person whose reputation is in scientific world turned out to be so badly damaged? After all, the light did not fall on Professor Hwang - now there are many first-class animal cloning specialists in the world. But for some reason, the participants in the “Revival of the Mammoth” project preferred this scientist with a dubious past out of all the biotechnologists.
Probably the reason is that the chances of success are too low for anyone to agree to waste time on this venture. And what to waste time on while there is no DNA? And Professor Hwang is ready to participate in the project - apparently because, if successful, he will be able to once again raise his rating in the scientific world and rehabilitate himself in the eyes of scientists. The winner in such a case will be forgiven a lot. And in case of failure, he, in general, loses nothing.
Mammoth from Maly Lyakhovsky
It seemed that fate was more than favorable to the project participants. In May 2013, participants of the expedition organized by the Research Institute of Applied Ecology of NEFU and the Russian geographical society, recovered from a glacier on Maly Lyakhovsky Island an unusually well-preserved carcass of a female mammoth that died at the age of 50–60 years. Moreover, in the ice cavities under the animal’s body, a liquid was found that was similar in color to blood. It was a sensation - for the first time in the history of paleontology, scientists were able to find a mammoth with unfrozen blood!
However, the leader of the expedition, Semyon Grigoriev, and his colleague Daniel Fisher from the University of Michigan (USA) immediately stated: it is premature to claim that this liquid is the blood of an animal. To understand what it really is, a number of additional studies need to be conducted. At the same time, Dr. Fischer noted that it is possible that in the body of the found female mammoth it will be possible to find cells with intact nuclei - the soft tissues of the animal are very well preserved. When asked whether scientists would be able to collect material from these remains for cloning a mammoth, Fischer answered evasively: “I think it’s too early to raise the question of cloning.”
Scientists from NEFU were much more optimistic than their American counterparts. When Russian President Vladimir Putin came to the Lazarev Mammoth Museum in September of this year and, in a conversation with scientists, asked whether it was possible to clone this animal, since the female’s soft tissues were so well preserved, they answered in the affirmative.
But not all of their colleagues share the optimism of Yakut researchers. Even if the body of a female mammoth actually contains cells with a complete set of DNA, one cannot be sure that the giant will be able to reproduce. Scientists do not yet have experience successfully cloning extinct animals, although attempts have been made to do so.
Frustration
There are quite a lot of questions about the “Revival of the Mammoth” project. To get answers to at least some of them, we turned to the senior researcher laboratory of mammals of the Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences to Dr. biological sciences Evgeniy Mashchenko.
Evgeniy Nikolaevich, what is a female mammoth from Maly Lyakhovsky Island?
This is a carcass with a perfectly preserved front part of the body down to shoulder level. The animal's skin and hind legs were well preserved, and best of all, the tissue at the base of the trunk. At first glance, they even look, if not like fresh meat, then like a lightly fried steak - exactly that color. But all other internal organs were not preserved.
Was the assumption confirmed that the liquid leaking from the carcass was the blood of the animal?
No, that's not true. Semyon Grigoriev, at a conference on mammoths and their systematic relatives, which took place last May in Greece, said that what was initially mistaken for blood is the remains of tissue fluid. This fluid leaks out when ruptured. cell membranes and collects in the space between the internal organs and muscles. Leukocytes were found in it. However, not only there - in a well-preserved area near the base of the trunk they were also there.
So, scientists have finally got their hands on cells suitable for cloning?
Alas, this is not true. Leukocytes are not suitable for cloning because they do not have preserved nuclei.
That is, this find did not provide any material suitable for cloning?
Absolutely right. In this sense, the find on Maly Lyakhovsky Island is unpromising. I watched a report about the President visiting the Mammoth Museum, and, frankly, I was quite surprised to hear the answer to his question about the possibility of cloning. This is a very optimistic answer, but it is incorrect - on modern level With the development of science and technology, it is impossible to obtain cells for cloning from animals that died more than twenty years ago.
I'm not saying that this is impossible in principle - it cannot be done right now. Someday, perhaps, we will learn to work with material from long-dead animals. However, I cannot say how long it will take science to reach this level of research.
But it was possible to isolate DNA from mammoth mitochondria!
Yes, 70% of the mitochondrial DNA of mammoths has already been deciphered, which, of course, has given scientists valuable information about the evolution of these animals. But this doesn't do much for cloning.
What about nuclear DNA? Do scientists have at least some amount at their disposal?
Complete cell nuclei are never found in preserved tissues of mammoths and other Pleistocene animals. Only once were nuclear membranes found in muscle cells, but there was no DNA in them. Therefore, any DNA found in mammoths cannot be confidently considered nuclear. As a matter of fact, we don’t really know what kind of DNA this is - there’s nothing to compare it with.
In general, what can we say about cloning - the level of mammoth DNA research is now very low, we cannot solve much easier problems. For example, to understand how many species of mammoths lived in the territory East Asia. It is traditionally believed that there lived one species - woolly mammoth, however, some scientists divide it into different types. All of these studies are based on molecular data. However, the results are very unreliable because we still have too little DNA at our disposal. All that exists are scattered chains, by studying which it is absolutely impossible to restore the overall picture of the genome.
How many individuals need to be cloned so that the population of the revived mammoth can maintain its own numbers?
No matter how many mammoths can be obtained as a result of cloning, there will still not be a stable population capable of independently maintaining numbers. Firstly, because cloned animals most likely will not reproduce themselves. To have enough mammoths, they will have to be cloned again.
Secondly, let's see how they plan to clone a mammoth. This will be done by transplanting his DNA into the egg of a female Asian elephant. But the result will not be quite a mammoth, but a hybrid animal, and not an interspecific, but an intergeneric hybrid. With such hybridization, the chances of success are very, very small. There is one known case of the birth of such an animal - a hybrid of Asian and African elephants. But this cub lived only three weeks.
How did mammoths live?
And if a mammoth is ever cloned, where will it live? After all, the tundra-steppes where the mammoth lived in the Pleistocene have not been preserved.
A mammoth can live in artificial conditions, just as zoos now house various animals that have become extinct in their natural habitat.
That is, it can be fed with modern plants?
Quite. The fact is that 60% of the plants that existed in the world where the mammoth lived now exist. They are still common in the Arctic. The remaining 40% either disappeared or are found in other climatic zones - not in the tundra, for example, but in the mountains of Central Asia.
However, I would like to note that our data on mammoth nutrition is also, alas, far from exhaustive. All of them are based on a study of the stomach contents of the Berezovsky and Shandri mammoths, in which it was well preserved. We know that 90% of the diet of these animals was herbaceous plants, mainly grasses and sedges, as well as a few representatives of the gonoceae and carnation families. Of the rest, 5% are mosses, another 5% are shrubs and trees, mainly young shoots.
But here's the problem - both of these mammoths apparently died at the end of the summer. It is unknown what mammoths ate in winter.
And what did we learn about the specific intestinal microflora of mammoths - microorganisms that helped these giants digest plant foods? After all, without it, any herbivorous animal cannot eat normally.
For now, I can say one thing - most likely, such microflora existed. It is possible that some symbiotic ciliates that were found in modern elephants were also found in mammoths, since the physiology of these animals is largely similar. Of course, the mammoth also had its own unique characteristics, since it lived in unique conditions environment, but there should be no more than a third of them. Otherwise, elephants and mammoths were very, very similar.
Now there is an opportunity to understand this issue, since work has begun in America to study the droppings of the Columbian mammoth using molecular biological methods. Perhaps scientists will be able to isolate the DNA of the intestinal symbionts of these animals from mammoth excrement. However, so far no one has set such a goal - mainly attention is paid to plant DNA.
Is anything known about how the mammoth population was organized?
Based on the data available to paleontologists, it was similar to the Asian elephant population. Mammoths had male groups, single males, and family groups consisting of females with cubs. This structure is not very rigid, it can change depending on conditions.
The first data on the population structure of mammoths were obtained during the study of the remains of these animals in the vicinity of Sevsk - a family group that died at the same time was discovered there. This must have been the result of a natural disaster - perhaps a flood. And in the town of Hot Springs in South Dakota, a natural trap was discovered that caught only males, and they were all in the same age range. It turns out that a male group lived there.
And yet, if scientists manage to create a self-reproducing minimal population of mammoths, what kind of space will they need to live in comfortable conditions?
But, alas, no one knows this. As for modern elephants, their survival requires an area of at least twelve square kilometers per individual - this is data from national parks. But at the same time, animals still experience constant stress. To prevent this from happening, an area of at least twenty square kilometers per individual is needed. Accordingly, for a normal life family group 20–30 individuals need a territory that is a circle with a radius of about thirty kilometers. If everything is normal, there is enough food and water, then the group does not go beyond this territory, but moves only within its borders. The female matriarch, who is at the head of the group, knows very well where in what season food can be found within this territory.
However, all these studies I'm talking about were done in East Africa, where there are two drylands and two rainy season, during which the vegetation is restored. Under Pleistocene conditions, the period of plant abundance was shorter, and winter lasted eight months. As I already said, we do not know what the mammoths ate in winter, which means we cannot say exactly what the territory of the family group was.
How do modern Arctic herbivores behave in such conditions, for example reindeer? All winter they migrate to meridional directions. But whether mammoths did this is a big question. The fact is that until a certain point, baby elephants cannot make long migrations. Until six months, they cannot walk more than five to eight kilometers a day.
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