Those Ice-Age elephants everybody loves

The charismatic mammoths are among the best known extinct animals of all time. We find their fossil remains in rocks as old as 6 million years up to the time of their extinction about 4000 years ago. The mammoth molar (cheek tooth) in this exhibit reveals the reason for their success. The enamel ridges allowed mammoths (like living elephants) to grind hundreds of pounds of vegetation per day. Over time, mammoths evolved increasing numbers of ridges by adding enamel plates—essentially flattened tubes—in their teeth. This was an adaptive response to the spread of grasslands throughout the northern hemisphere.