Mammuthus sungari

Songhua River Mammoth Temporal range: Pleistocene
Skeleton of Mammuthus sungari
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Proboscidea
Family:	Elephantidae
Genus:	Mammuthus
Species:	M. sungari
Binomial name
Mammuthus sungari (Zhou, M.Z, 1959)

Mammuthus sungari, sometimes called the Songhua River Mammoth,^[1] evolved from smaller Siberian mammoths and occurred in Northern China during the middle Pleistocene (about 280,000 years ago). It survived until the beginning of the Late Pleistocene.^[2]

Description

The replica specimen on display at the Ibaraki Nature Museum in Ibaraki, Japan is 9.1 metres (30 ft) long, 5.3 metres (17 ft) tall, and has an estimated weight of 17 tonnes (19 short tons)- slightly smaller than Paraceratherium, the largest known land mammal. The original skeleton is at the Inner Mongolian Museum and it is based on two very large individuals found in 1980 at the Zhalainuoer Coal Mine in Hulun Buir City. These specimens indicate that it is the largest mammoth species found.

M. sungari was described by Zhou, M.Z in 1959^[3]. Wei et al. (2010), who restudied the fossils referred to M sungari, considered this species to be a junior synonym of Mammuthus trogontherii (the steppe mammoth). The authors state that some of the fossils originally referred to M. sungari are referrable to M. trogontherii, while the others (such as the skeleton from Zhaoyuan County, Heilongjiang) can be referred to Mammuthus primigenius (the woolly mammoth), according to morphological characters and measurements^[4].

References

1. ^ Cheng-Yi Wang "Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleo-anthropology," the Journal. (January 1982 Vol 20 No. 1)
2. ^ Dong Wei, Xu Qinqi, Jin Changzhu, Liu Jinyi "THE QUATERNARY HERBIVORE FAUNAS IN NORTH-EAST CHINA, EVOLUTION UNDER CLIMATE CHANGE",Institute of vertebrate paleontology and paleoanthropology, chinese academy of sciences, beijing 100044 abstract
3. ^ Zhou, M.Z., 1959. Proboscidea. In: Pleistocene mammalian fossils from the northeastern provinces: 22-34, pls. 6-15. Edited by Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
4. ^ GuangBiao Wei, SongMei Hu, KeFu Yu, YaMei Hou, Xin Li, ChangZhu Jin, Yuan Wang, JianXin Zhao, WenHua Wang (2010). "New materials of the steppe mammoth, Mammuthus trogontherii, with discussion on the origin and evolutionary patterns of mammoths". SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences 53 (7): 956–963. doi:10.1007/s11430-010-4001-4.