Mammoths, Mastodons And Other Prehistoric Elephants

In the very center of St. Petersburg, near the old Stock Exchange,



the Zoological Museum houses several unique finds: mammoth mummies. The permafrost preserved their bodies for thousands of years, and now, based on their DNA, scientists can try to revive the mammoth population. The envelope depicts a mammoth found on the Berezovka River in Kolyma.

The remains of a mammoth found in the village of Yukagir were exhibited at the EXPO "Wisdom of Nature" in 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

Mammoth skeleton on postal stationary stamp and postmark and the reconstruction of the mammoth on the cachet, Mammoth Siegsdorf museum, Germany, 2015.

Mammoth reconstruction in Nature Science Museum, postal stationary from Hungary, 1996.

The city of Verkhoyansk in Yakutia. It is considered the cold pole of the Northern Hemisphere; in 1885, a temperature of -67.8 C was recorded here.
At the entrance to the city, there is a stele in the form of mammoth tusks.

The Venus of Brassempouy is a fragmentary ivory figurine from the Upper Palaeolithic, discovered in 1892 in a cave at Brassempouy, France. Dating to around 25,000 years ago, it is among the earliest known realistic depictions of a human face.

France, 1976. Designed and engraved by Georges Bétemps.

Mali, 1994.

Palaeomastodon was an early proboscidean from the late Eocene to early Oligocene of Africa, showcasing both upper and lower tusks and a short trunk—marking a transitional stage between primitive ancestors and modern elephants. Millions of years later, during the Miocene, shovel-tusked elephants like Amebelodon and Platybelodon evolved in Asia and North America, both distinguished by their flattened, elongated lower tusks, likely used to scoop or cut vegetation in swampy environments. These genera reflect a phase of experimental tusk morphology in proboscidean evolution. Later, during the Pliocene and into the Ice Age, the genus Mammuthus (mammoths) emerged, with early mammoths appearing in Africa and Eurasia during the Miocene–Pliocene and gradually adapting to colder climates. By the Pleistocene, woolly mammoths (M. primigenius) became iconic Ice Age megafauna, with long, curved tusks and thick fur, well-adapted to glacial environments. Together, these species illustrate the evolutionary diversity and ecological adaptability of ancient elephant relatives across millions of years.

Evolution of the elephant, issued by the Republic of Congo, 1994.
- Paleomastodon
- Mammoth (Miocene-Pliocene)
- Amebelodon
- Platybeledon
- Mammoth (Pleistocene)

In Russia, the mammoth has twice become the emblem of sports competitions: in Yakutsk and Khanty-Mansiysk