Ice Age mammoth fossil arrives at CosmoCaixa from Siberia to Barcelona
- What science says, for now, about their extinction
- The giant that gave rise to the elephant family
- To learn more about mammoths
Visitors to the CosmoCaixa Science Museum can travel back to the Ice Age without leaving the city, simply by admiring an impressive fossilised skeleton of a woolly mammoth. After living on the Siberian steppe between 40,000 and 50,000 years ago, this unique specimen is now the new inhabitant of the permanent exhibition hall at CosmoCaixa.
The director of the CosmoCaixa Science Museum, Valentí Farràs, and the head of Exhibitions and Science Activities at the ”la Caixa” Foundation, Javier Hidalgo, have presented the new addition to the museum's Universe Hall, a real woolly mammoth fossil measuring 6 metres long and 3.5 metres high.
This relic from the Ice Age, which is between 40,000 and 50,000 years old and originates from the Tyumen region (Russia), will allow visitors to learn more about the life and extinction of these mysterious animals, true icons of the Ice Age.
This complete specimen is made from original remains, in very good condition, from various adult specimens preserved in the permafrost. After an initial assembly at the end of 2021, the mammoth has been the star of an exhibition on these animals that has travelled to the CaixaForum centres in Seville, Zaragoza, Madrid, Palma and Tarragona, attracting more than 308,000 visitors. It will now form part of the collection of the CosmoCaixa Science Museum in Barcelona and will be integrated into the Evolution section, in the Universe Room, opposite the Flooded Forest, where it will become an emblematic piece.
Fossils are real witnesses to events that explain how life was established on our planet. They are therefore fundamental elements for scientific dissemination, as they illustrate the evolution of life, the history of the Earth and the existence of extinct species, and connect the past with the present to reflect on the future challenges we face.
In the Evolution section of CosmoCaixa's Universe Room, visitors will learn, for example, that this extraordinary animal coexisted with humans for thousands of years and will be able to reflect on at what point in the evolution of hominins they began to hunt it. Fossils of other prehistoric animals contemporary with the mammoth, such as the giant armadillo Holmesina and the mustela eversmannii, will also be on display.
What science says, for now, about their extinction
This mammoth fossil will be the starting point for learning about the lifestyle of these gregarious mammals, which consumed up to 180 kilograms of grass per day, had a gestation period of 22 months and migrated south in winter. It will also allow visitors to reflect on the great extinctions that the Earth has suffered throughout its history. The extinction of the mammoths continues to be shrouded in mystery among those who think it was due to human action and those who believe that climate change led to their disappearance.
So far, scientific evidence indicates that their disappearance may have been caused by a combination of factors. On the one hand, the increase in global temperature favoured the spread of forests and the consequent elimination of the large areas of grassland where they fed, which led to a decline in mammoth populations. In addition, these animals were hunted extensively as they were an important source of protein, fat and skin during the Ice Age. Their bones were also used to make tools and weapons, although the most coveted part was their ivory tusks, which were used to make sculptures and other objects. Their living relatives, elephants, face the same threats today.
Today, advances in the field of genetics are leading to new discoveries and theories. Research recently published in Cell has made it possible to recover genetic material from six groups of bacteria present in mammoth specimens. Some of these bacteria have the potential to cause serious or fatal infections, opening up new possibilities about the role microbes may have played in their extinction.
On the other hand, there are other projects in this field that aim to revive mammoths from DNA obtained from well-preserved specimens, which is generating an ethical debate about whether or not this should be done and for what purpose, apart from scientific advancement.
The giant that gave rise to the elephant family
Mammoths belong to the proboscidean family, which dates back 60 million years and includes animals with trunks. Two hundred species have been identified in this family, including the one that gave rise to the elephant family in Africa 9 million years ago, which today has only three species, of which the Asian elephant is the closest living relative to the mammoth.
The first mammoths appeared in Africa 5 million years ago, and just over 3.5 million years ago they left this territory and continued their evolution in other parts of the world.
Woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius) roamed vast areas from the United Kingdom to Spain in the west and to Siberia, China and Japan in the east. They then crossed the frozen Bering Strait to Alaska and from there to the Great Lakes region. About 4,000 years ago, the last mammoths disappeared in the Russian Arctic.
The woolly mammoth is the best-known species of the Ice Age thanks to the evidence found, from fossilised bone remains to frozen mummies, which have enabled extraordinary studies of their age, DNA and lifestyle. Woolly mammoths were smaller than the species that preceded them, the southern mammoth and the steppe mammoth, and also smaller than those of the next lineage, the Columbian mammoths of North America.
To learn more about mammoths
To mark the arrival of the new inhabitant of the Universe Room, the CosmoCaixa Science Museum will be offering a guided family tour entitled ‘Mammoth Hunters’ over the coming months, which will highlight the work of specialists in palaeontology and archaeology, explain the main characteristics of these animals — for example, the function of their impressive defences, which are neither horns nor tusks, but incisors — and how they coexisted with humans.
A mediation space called ‘Remains and Traces’ has also been created, which will allow visitors to learn about fossils, the different types of fossils, and the fossilisation process.
In addition, to learn more about mammoths, the ”la Caixa” Foundation has recorded a five-episode podcast, available on CaixaForum+, to provide the general public with more details about these majestic animals.
The first episode provides an introduction to the species and its evolution, including its current relatives, elephants. The second episode analyses the relationship between mammoths and humans: accustomed to subsisting on what they gathered and small game, capturing a mammoth and being able to feed on it represented great social prestige. The third episode uses scientific data to debunk the myth that only men hunted these animals and that they were extremely violent towards them. The fourth episode discusses the valuable information that mammoth teeth provide about their diet and, therefore, also about the type of climate in which they lived. Finally, the last episode explains how science is attempting to bring the species back from extinction.