Hand carved woolly mammoth figurine

Hand-carved woolly mammoth figurine

This is a hand-carved figurine of a woolly mammoth. The entire body was carved from a solid block of natural mammoth ivory (Mammuthus primigenius). The only separate elements are the tusks. These are glued to the main body once the carving is completed. Please carefully look at the pictures for precise dimensions. The color of the ivory is creamy-white.

The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) is an extinct species of mammoth that lived during the Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene epoch. It was one of the last in a line of mammoth species, beginning with the African Mammuthus subplanifrons in the early Pliocene. The woolly mammoth began to diverge from the steppe mammoth about 800,000 years ago in East Asia. Its closest extant relative is the Asian elephant. The Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) lived alongside the woolly mammoth in North America, and DNA studies show that the two hybridized with each other.

The appearance and behavior of this species are among the best studied of any prehistoric animal because of the discovery of frozen carcasses in Siberia and North America, as well as skeletons, teeth, stomach contents, dung, and depiction of life in prehistoric cave paintings.

Geological epoch: Pleistocene.

Age: Over 10,000 years.

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