Mammoths, also known by their genus
name Mammuthus, the "Mammon's Horn," 
may appear to be a fuzzy elephant, 
but puberty hit this one hard. Like 
its modern cousins, mammoths were 
quite large creatures, with the 
tallest of them reaching four meters
tall with a weight of eight tonnes. 
Both genders possessed long, curving 
tusks, unlike their modern 
relatives. Legends and mystique
surrounded the mammoth as far back 
as the 1600s, for many claimed to 
have seen the mammoth in all its 
furry glory. Thanks to cold 
climates, mammoths were incredibly 
well-preserved, and some bodies even 
bleed upon excavation.

Living during the Pliocene to the 
early Holocene, the mammoth walked
the Earth for almost five million
years across North America, Europe,
and Asia. Depending on the location,
mammoths' diets differed from one
another but were unified in their 
love for plants. They must have
had some mean gardens. American
mammoths were grazers that fed on
trees and shrubs; others ate herbs
and grasses. Baby Siberian mammoths 
ate the dung of the adults due to
soft baby teeth that could not chew
grass at the time. Climate change 
and over-hunting are blamed for the 
extinction of this hairy creature.
However, science might yet prove
that extinction does not have to be
forever as de-extinction efforts
are focusing on the mammoth.
