subplanifrons), appeared around 5 million years ago during the early Pliocene in what is now southern and eastern Africa. The oldest representative of Mammuthus, the South African mammoth ( M. Mammoths are more closely related to living Asian elephants than African Elephants. They were members of the family Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors. They lived from the Pliocene epoch (from around 5 million years ago) into the Holocene at about 4,000 years ago, and various species existed in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America.
The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. primigenius (formerly Elephas primigenius)Ī mammoth is any species of the extinct elephantid genus Mammuthus, one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans.
