Q 01/05

Which living animal is the woolly mammoth's closest relative?

A) The Asian elephant

B) The African bush elephant

C) The African forest elephant

D) The manatee

Answer · why

A) The Asian elephant

The Asian elephant: the three lineages split so close together that the question stayed open until 2006, when DNA from frozen mammoths put them beside...

Q 02/05

Despite its giant reputation, how did a woolly mammoth compare in size with a modern African elephant?

A) Half the size

B) About the same size

C) Twice the size

D) Five times the size

Answer · why

B) About the same size

About the same size: big bulls stood around 3 metres at the shoulder, and the true giant of the family was its ancestor the steppe mammoth, about a me...

Q 03/05

Where did woolly mammoths survive longest, until roughly 2000 BCE?

A) Greenland

B) Alaska's North Slope

C) The Kamchatka Peninsula

D) Wrangel Island

Answer · why

D) Wrangel Island

Wrangel Island: mammoths were still grazing this Arctic outpost about 4,000 years ago, centuries after Egypt's Great Pyramid went up.

Q 04/05

With no humans yet on Alaska's St. Paul Island, what probably finished off its mammoths about 5,600 years ago?

A) A volcanic eruption

B) A run of deadly winters

C) Hunting by polar bears

D) A shortage of fresh water

Answer · why

D) A shortage of fresh water

A shortage of fresh water: as seas rose the island shrank, some lakes were lost to the ocean and salt water seeped into the rest, leaving the herd to ...

Q 05/05

Mainland woolly mammoths died out about 10,000 years ago, at the close of which ice-age epoch?

A) The Holocene

B) The Pliocene

C) The Pleistocene

D) The Miocene

Answer · why

C) The Pleistocene

The Pleistocene: as the ice age closed, a warmer, wetter climate turned the dry grassland mammoths grazed into forest and bog, and human hunters added...