'Rare' mammoth skull discovered

[Owlscrying]

The "extremely rare" fossilised skull of a steppe mammoth has been unearthed in southern France.

The discovery in the Auvergne region could shed much needed light on the evolution of these mighty beasts.

Many isolated teeth of steppe mammoth have been found, but only a handful of skeletons exist; and in these surviving specimens, the skull is rarely intact.

Palaeontologists Frederic Lacombat and Dick Mol describe this skull specimen as being well preserved.

It belongs to a male steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii) that stood about 3.7m (12ft) tall and lived about 400,000 years ago, during Middle Pleistocene times.

The animal was about 35 years of age when it died, the researchers estimate.

The steppe mammoth is of vital importance for understanding mammoth evolution. It represents the transitional phase between an ancient species known as the southern mammoth and the more recent woolly mammoth.

The southern mammoth appears to have lived in a savannah environment, and was probably a "browser", feeding on trees and shrubs.

However, the molar teeth of steppe mammoth and woolly mammoth show that these animals were adapted to grazing.

This is thought to represent an adaptation to climate change; as conditions got colder and drier over the Pleistocene period, the savannah disappeared, making way for grassy steppe. Mammoth had to adapt their diets accordingly.

Two molar teeth belonging to the newly discovered specimen were found in 1986, during the construction of a water pipeline.

Frederic Lacombat was able to trace the site of this discovery and subsequent excavations revealed the skull from which they had come.

The team plans to lift the skull out of the ground and transport it on a truck to Crozatier Museum in nearby Le Puy-en-Velay.

go