WOOLY MAMMOTH LOWER JAW MOLAR - Macedonia, Greece

LATE PLEISTOCENE PERIOD:  200,000 - 20,000 years ago

Even more amazing is the fact that this giant lower molar has not been repaired nor restored in any manner.  It has been treated with a chemical hardener to preserve its choice state as found.  You will not find a more rare and exotic mammoth tooth specimen as this choice investment fossil.  Again, we have never seen one available for sale before this and due to the fact that it came from a, old and large, private collection of extremely rare specimens, it can be said that you probably will never see one like this again available for purchase.  The images testify as to its extreme fine quality of intactness and preservation.  The last close-up image of the surface exhibits the choice graining and detail still present on this specimen.  VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Emerging 55 million years ago, the group of mammals called Proboscideans are identified by the presence of tusks and a trunk and include mammoths, mastodons and elephants.  The oldest mammoth remains have placed the beginnings of the beasts in Africa but eventually, they migrated to Europe and Asia.  Around 1.7 million years ago, the Ancestral mammoth began reaching North America and later evolved into the Columbian mammoth, otherwise known as the American mammoth. 

Mammoths were herbivores.  Their teeth were huge flat molars with a surface that was ideally suited to grinding up hard-to-digest foods such as tough grasses and other thick vegetation.  The teeth of a mammoth are amongst the most bizarre teeth of any animal ever known.  From the side, they resemble an extended accordion and are made up of a row of vertically oriented attached plates that when worn, create a washboard-like grinding surface.  A mammoth has four teeth in its skull, two uppers (one on each side) and two lowers.  Over the course of the life of the animal, six sets of teeth will grow, a worn set being pushed forward and out to make room for a new and unworn set.  This characteristic is still true of modern elephants.  

A baby mammoth at age 6 will have already had three sets of teeth.  By 13 years of age, the fourth set emerges followed by a fifth set at age 27 years.  The final set of teeth come in around 43 years of age and as it wears away, the animal eventually starves to death and dies on average between 60 and 80 years of age.  Interestingly, the animal's life is limited by the fact that after the sixth set, no new teeth grow in to replace the final worn down set and the animal is no longer able to chew its food.  

Mammoth teeth can also tell us the age and species of the creature.  Scientists can approximate age by comparing the length and width of the molars to corresponding age and tooth size charts from modern elephants.  The species is determined by the number of ridges found in the first four inches of the flat chewing surface.  

Once roaming the grassy plains of Europe, the Wooly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) stood around 10 - 12 feet high at the shoulder and weighed in a 6 - 8 tons.  Some remains have been found with 16 foot tusks weighing several hundred pounds each!  No one knows why they died out at the end of the Pleistocene Period.  The DNA of an extinct Wooly mammoth is 95% identical to an Indian elephant.  With recent discoveries of Wooly mammoth remains frozen in tundra, there are ongoing attempts to clone intact DNA with that of the modern Indian elephant.

UNBELIEVABLE CONDITION AND RAREST OF RARE SOURCES - OLD COLLECTION SPECIMEN!

8" in length x 5.7" high x 4" thick

SOLD    LM8003     INCLUDES STAND     Actual Item - One Only

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