EXPLORATION IN ALASKA IN I907 — GILMORE 27 



U. S. National Museum, collected in Alaska by Lieutenant Hooper, 

 Dr. W. H. Dall, E. W. Nelson, L. M. Turner, A. G. Maddren, and 

 others. 



ELEPHAS PRIMIGENIUS Blumenbach 



The Northern Mammoth 



Ekphas primigenius Blumenbach, Handb. Naturg., 1st French ed., vol. 11. 

 1803, p. 407. 



Description. — "Jaw broad and rounded ; profile in front of tooth 

 row almost vertical ; enamel folds narrow and compressed ; rather 

 more than two folds to the inch, or twenty-four in ten inches ; enamel 

 itself thin." 1 



Remarks. — This species is, geographically, the most widely dis- 

 tributed of extinct elephants. It has been reported as ranging from 

 Florida, Texas, and Mexico on the south and northward into Can- 

 ada and Alaska. It is also found in Great Britain and nearly all 

 Europe and northern Asia. 



Its remains are particularly abundant in parts of Alaska and 

 Siberia. As yet no complete specimens have been found in Alaska, 

 although several good skulls and nearly all parts of the skeleton 

 are known from scattered but well preserved bones. Neither have 

 specimens been found in the flesh, as is so often reported through 

 the columns of the newspapers and even by some of the magazines. 



The size of the mammoth has been so grossly overestimated by 

 the general public that a few comparisons may help to correct some 

 of these false impressions. The largest mounted specimen known is 

 the skeleton in the collection of the Chicago Academy of Sciences, 

 obtained in 1878 from Spokane County, in the State of Washington. 

 The height of this animal when alive has been estimated to be thir- 

 teen feet. The African elephant "Jumbo" was eleven feet high, 

 and there have been other elephants recorded as measuring twelve 

 feet in height ; so, as this would indicate, there is not so much differ- 

 ence in size between the mammoth and living elephants as is often 

 supposed. 



Mr. Lucas says : 



"Tusks offer convenient terms of comparison, and those of a fully 

 grown mammoth are from eight to ten feet in length, those of the 

 famous St. Petersburg specimen and those of the huge specimen in 



1 Lucas, F. A. : Systematic Paleontology of the Pleistocene Deposits of 

 Maryland. Maryland Geol. Surv., December, 1906, p. 163. 



The above characters are given by Mr. F. A. Lucas as distinguishing tin's 

 species from all other elephants. 



