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

Mammoths and Asian elephants are more closely related to each other than either is to African elephants.

Q 02/05

How large was a woolly mammoth compared with today's elephants?

A) About the size of an African elephant

B) Twice the size of an African elephant

C) About the size of a rhinoceros

D) About the size of a large horse

Answer · why

A) About the size of an African elephant

Bulls stood up to 3.49 m at the shoulder and weighed up to 8.2 tonnes.

Q 03/05

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

A) Greenland

B) Alaska's North Slope

C) The Taymyr Peninsula

D) Wrangel Island

Answer · why

D) Wrangel Island

That is about 4,000 years ago, centuries after the Great Pyramid was built.

Q 04/05

Where in Alaska did an isolated mammoth population hang on until roughly 3600 BCE?

A) Kodiak in the Gulf of Alaska

B) Attu in the Aleutians

C) St. Paul in the Pribilofs

D) Nunivak in the Bering Sea

Answer · why

C) St. Paul in the Pribilofs

They probably died of thirst as the island's few freshwater lakes dried and eroded.

Q 05/05

Roughly when did the last woolly mammoths on the Siberian mainland die out?

A) 100,000 years ago

B) 10,000 years ago

C) 20,000 years ago

D) 40,000 years ago

Answer · why

B) 10,000 years ago

Island populations then outlived them by thousands of years.