Adaptation of the woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius (Blumenbach, 1799) to habitat conditions in the glacial period

Abstract

An analysis of the available data on the various adaptations of the woolly mammoth to the cryoarid conditions of the Ice Age is presented. Mammuthus primigenius had a set of specific anatomic–morphological (thick long three-row wool, small ears, a short tail, an adipose “hump”, a “hood”-like extension on the trunk, and wide soles of the feet) and physiological (reduced sensitivity to cold and a specific kind of lipid metabolism) ideoadaptations that provided safe existence and wide distribution of this species in the Northern Holarctic for a long time. The current data make it possible to refer the woolly mammoth to a highly specialized species of the Mammoth biome.