Name:
Mammuthus columbi.
Phonetic: Mam-mu-fus ko-lum-be.
Named By: Hugh Falconer - 1857.
Synonyms: Archidiskodon imperator, Elephas
eellsi, Elephas floridanus, Elephas imperator, Elephas jacksoni,
Elephas jeffersonii, Elephas maibeni, Elephas roosevelti, Elephas
washingtonii, Euelephas imperator, Mammuthus imperator, Mammuthus
floridanus, Mammuthus imperator, Mammuthus jacksoni, Mammuthus
jeffersonii, Parelephas floridanus, Parelephas jacksoni, Parelephas
jeffersonii, Parelephas progressus, Parelephas roosevelti, Parelephas
washingtonii.
Classification: Chordata, Mammalia,
Proboscidea, Elephantidae, Mammuthus.
Species: M. columbi.
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Up to 4 meters tall at the shoulder.
Known locations: Canada, USA, Mexico &
Nicaragua.
Time period: Calabrian through to Tarantian of the
Pleistocene. Possibly survived into the early Holocene.
Fossil representation: Multiple specimens.
Mammuthus
columbi is better known as the Columbian mammoth, although
it is not
actually named after the country Colombia that is in South America,
but after the province of British Columbia in Canada. The Columbian
mammoth appears to have been one of the most common mammoths roaming
North America during the Pleistocene, and is thought to have come
from mammoths that crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia into North
America during the early Pleistocene at the latest. This would have
been possible by fluctuating sea levels that would have been constantly
rising and falling in connection with decreasing and increasing
glaciations.
Compared
to other mammoths,
the Columbian mammoth is generally thought to have had a reduced
covering of hair from those that were active in Eurasia. This is
based upon the fact that North America is generally considered to
have been warmer and less frozen than Europe during the Pleistocene,
and an extensive covering of hair would have actually hindered the
Columbian mammoths ability to cope with the warmer conditions.
One
species of mammoth called
M.
exilis is thought to be descended from M.
columbi. Better
known as the pygmy mammoth, M. exilis is
currently only known from
the Californian channel islands where a population of Columbian
mammoths are thought to have travelled to when the sea levels were much
lower, and land masses larger, only to be cut off from the mainland
when sea levels rose again.
As with most of the North American megafauna, the disappearance of the Columbian mammoth remains an uncertain and controversial subject. Hunting by humans is considered to have been a contributing factor, with fossil sites indicating that mammoths were killed and processed by human hunters, although in seemingly insufficient numbers to wipe out the whole population. Climate change has also been taken to be another contributing factor, and combined with increased hunting the stress may have been too great for the population to survive. Other current theories put forward include new diseases brought in from Asia by new migrants such as the first people, but these diseases would have to be so specialised that they would have affected all of the large megafauna while largely having little effect if any upon the smaller animals that exist to this day. Another is that an air burst from a comet exploding in the upper atmosphere similar to the Tunguska event of 1909 caused continent wide devastation that starved the larger animal species into extinction. To further complicate matters some Columbian mammoth remains are claimed to have come from the early Holocene period several thousand years after all of these events are supposed to have wiped out the megafauna. The only thing that remains fairly stable to say at this time is that populations of Columbian mammoths as with other megafauna at this time seem to have declined rapidly to a point that they could not recover from.
Further reading
- North American Proboscideans: Mammoths: The state of Knowledge, 2003.
Quaternary International. 126-128: 73–25. - Larry D. Agenbroad.
- Advances in proboscidean taxonomy & classification, anatomy
& physiology, and ecology & behavior. - Quaternary
International. 126–128: 5. - J. Shoshani & P. Tassy - 2005.
- Columbian mammoth petroglyphs from the San Juan River near Bluff,
Utah, United States. Rock Art Research: The Journal of the Australian
Rock Art Research Association (AURA), Vol. 28, No. 2 - Ekkehart Malotki
& Henry D. Wallace - 2011.
- New skeletal remains of Mammuthus columbi from Glynn County, Georgia
with notes on their historical and paleoecological significance. -
Southeastern Naturalist. 11 (2): 163–172. - D. B. Patterson, A. J. Mead
& R. A. Bahn - 2012.
- Geographic variation of diet and habitat of the Mexican populations
of Columbian Mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). -
Quaternary International.
276–277: 8–16. V. C. A. N. P�rez-Crespo, J. N. Arroyo-Cabrales, M.
Benammi, E. Johnson, O. J. Polaco, A. Santos-Moreno, P. Morales-Puente
& E. Cienfuegos-Alvarado - 2012.
- Attempted DNA extraction from a Rancho La Brea Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus
columbi): Prospects for ancient DNA from asphalt deposits. -
Ecology
and Evolution. 4 (4): 329–336. - D. A. Gold, J. Robinson, A. B.
Farrell, J. M. Harris, O. Thalmann & D. K. Jacobs - 2014.
- Friesenhahn Cave: Late Pleistocene paleoecology and predator-prey
relationships of mammoths with an extinct scimitar cat. - Late
Cretaceous to Quaternary Strata and Fossils of Texas: Field Excursions
Celebrating 125 Years of GSA and Texas Geology, GSA South-Central
Section Meeting, Austin, Texas, April 2013. pp. 15–31. - Russel W.
Graham, Ernest L. Lundelius, Laurence Meissner & Keith
Muhlestein - 2014.
- Late Quaternary sea-level history and the antiquity of mammoths
(Mammuthus exilis and Mammuthus columbi),
Channel Islands National
Park, California, USA. - Quaternary Research. 83 (3): 502–521. - D. H.
Muhs, K. R. Simmons, L. T. Groves, J. P. McGeehin, R. Randall Schumann
& L. D. Agenbroad - 2015.
- Mammuthus population dynamics in Late Pleistocene
North America:
divergence, phylogeography, and introgression. - Frontiers in Ecology
and Evolution. 4. - Jacob Enk, Alison Devault, Christopher Widga,
Jeffrey Saunders, Paul Szpak, John Southon, Jean-Marie Rouillard, Beth
Shapiro, G. Brian Golding, Grant Zazula, Duane Froese, Daniel C.
Fisher, Ross D. E. MacPhee & Hendrik Poinar - 2016.
- Diet and habitat for six American Pleistocene proboscidean species
using carbon and oxygen stable isotopes. - Ameghiniana. 53 (1): 39–51.
- V. A. P�rez-Crespo, J. L. Prado, M. T. Alberdi, J. Arroyo-Cabrales
& E. Johnson - 2016.
- A simulation of anthropogenic Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus
columbi)
extinction. - Historical Biology. 31 (5): 610–617. - M. Klapman
& A. Capaldi - 2019.