Figure 4: Berezovka Mammoth. This is the most famous of all mammoths, the frozen Berezovka (bear-uh-ZOVE-kuh) mammoth. He is displayed in the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the struggling position in which he was found near Siberia’s Berezovka River, just inside the Arctic Circle. His trunk and much of his head, reconstructed in this display, had been eaten by predators before scientists arrived in 1901. After a month of excavation, ten pony-drawn sleds hauled most of his cut-up carcass more than 2,000 miles south to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. From there he was taken to St. Petersburg’s Zoological Museum, today’s leading institution for studying frozen mammoths. The handle (extreme bottom center) of the shovel used in the excavation provides the scale. Inches above the handle is Berezovka’s extended and flattened penis. While in the museum, I saw this reproductive organ’s condition and realized that it helps explain how Berezovka and other frozen mammoths died.
Figure 5: Dima, Baby Mammoth (right). In 1977, the first complete baby mammoth was found—a 6 –12-month-old male named “Dima.” His flattened, emaciated, but well-preserved body was encased in a lens of ice, 6 feet below the surface of a gentle mountainous slope.1 Portions of the ice were clear and others quite brownish yellow with mineral and organic particles.”2 Silt, clay, and small particles of gravel were found throughout his digestive and respiratory tracts (trachea, bronchi, and lungs). These details are important clues in understanding frozen mammoths.
Most mammoths were fat and well fed, but before being frozen, Dima may have suffered from one of the many problems common to baby elephants. (Within their first year of life, up to 36% of elephants die.3 )
