| 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]
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].