| Mammoths started appearing 3 million years ago and died out about 10,000 years ago. They were about 9-1/2 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed about 3 tons. |
| The mammoth went through three distinct stages in Europe. |
| The first to appear is referred to as the ancestral mammoth, Mammuthus meridionalis, which roamed Europe during the Late Pliocene to Early Pleistocene, about 2.6 million to 700,000 years ago. |
| The steppe mammoth, M. trogontherii, lived about 700,000 to 500,000 years ago and was eventually succeeded by the woolly mammoth, M. primigenius, which lived from about 350,000 to 10,000 years ago, at which point most mammoths became extinct. |
| Although subject to controversy, it is now generally agreed that mammoths died out from a combination of climate change, hunting pressure from humans, and probably disease. |
