Mammoths spread across Eurasia
Southern mammoths give way to steppe mammoths, and the lineage adapts steadily to cold and grass.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1.7 million years
- Known to
- ± 200 thousand years
- Era
- Early Pleistocene, Quaternary
Mammuthus meridionalis, a woodland browser, spreads across Europe in the early Pleistocene and is succeeded around 1.8 million years ago by the steppe mammoth, Mammuthus trogontherii — larger, with higher-crowned teeth carrying more enamel plates for grinding abrasive grass. Steppe mammoths reach four metres at the shoulder, larger than any later mammoth. The woolly mammoth evolves from this stock in Siberia, and each step tracks the deepening cold.