JOAN CARTAN-HANSEN, HOST: Mammoths are ancient elephants.

And studying mammoths is a good way to understand what the world was like more than 10 thousand years ago.

Let's go back in time and learn more about mammoths.

[MUSIC] CARTAN-HANSEN: About 13,000 years ago, a big elephant-like creature called the Columbian mammoth lived all over the world.

We know this because the preserved bones, or fossils, of mammoths have been found all over.

SUZANN HENRIKSON, ARCHEOLOGIST, IDAHO NATIONAL LABORATORY: A mammoth is an extinct form of elephant that, uh, roamed the Eastern Snake River plane during the Pleistocene.

We think they became extinct somewhere between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, but we're still collecting information to find out essentially when the last mammoth roamed this area.

CARTAN-HANSEN: Idaho looked different back in the Pleistocene age.

Sometimes, there were sheets of ice that eventually melted as the climate warmed.

They formed again when the climate cooled.

Lots of other animals like the saber tooth cat and the dire wolf lived then, too.

Scientists think there were ten different species of mammoths.

The two species in North America were the woolly mammoth and the Columbian mammoth.

HENRIKSON: So, a mammoth is about, a third to two-thirds larger than the African or Indian elephant.

Some mammoth species were larger than others.

The Columbian mammoth was particularly big.

CARTAN-HANSEN: The Columbian mammoths stood about 13 feet tall at the shoulder and weighed roughly 22,000 pounds.

To get that big they had to eat a lot.

Mammoths were herbivores, meaning they only ate plants.

So they would spend most of their day eating hundreds of pounds of food.

HENRIKSON: We always imagined, you know, mammoth on the tundra, uh, but I think it's really important for us to understand that mammoth in this part of Southern Idaho were probably relying on grasses, because according to the palaeoecological data, this was always a high desert step, a cool step.

So, it would've been grasses that they relied on.

CARTAN-HANSEN: Scientist think mammoths lived a lot like today's elephants.

They traveled in herds, migrating or moving from place-to-place finding food.

Male and female mammoths had big, curved tusks.

These tusks are similar to bones and are made of ivory.

Mammoth used them to protect themselves.

Tusks could grow to be 16 feet long and when the animal died, Native Americans would use the tusks to make tools.

The tusks are essentially giant teeth that protrude from the mammoth's mouth.

Despite their huge size, some scientists say prehistoric peoples were able to hunt mammoths by using spears and by throwing objects.

It would have been a lot harder than the way people hunt today.

HENRIKSON: A lot of archeologists suspect that to kill a mammoth, you would have to run it into a bog, you know, slow it down because a full-sized mammoth is very dangerous.

So there are a number of hypotheses about how you could actually kill, or a hunter could kill a mammoth, but we know they were, they were indeed successful at it.

CARTAN-HANSEN: Mammoths roamed the earth for at least half a million years.

Columbian mammoths died out between 10 and 13 thousand years ago.

Wooly mammoths lasted a bit longer, but by four thousand years ago, they were gone.

HENRIKSON: So, scientists currently believe that it was the onset of that warmer drier conditions out here, that affected the amount of grass that grew out here.

And so the mammoths essentially starved to death, because they could not get the necessary nutrients to survive.

CARTAN-HANSEN: Today, scientists look for the remains of mammoths.

Scientists who search for and dig up the bones of animals that are now extinct are called paleontologists.

But other people find mammoths bones, too.

When the Idaho Fish and Game department tried to improve Tolo lake in Nez Perce national historical park, they found a big surprise: three whole skeletons of mammoths that must have been more than 12,000 years old.

More recently, paleontologists found a mammoth bone and tusk at the American Falls reservoir.

The fossilized bones just washed up onto the beach and were uncovered.

These paleontologists used special tools to bring the fossils back to a museum for more research.

People have even found whole mammoths frozen in the snow.

Scientists are studying mammoth DNA to learn even more about these animals.

There is one thing scientists have discovered.

Mammoths and modern elephants are in the same family.

And the genetic information tells us they're more closely related to Asian elephants.

So, scientists will continue studying mammoths and their bones to learn more about our world and how it's changed over time.

If you want to learn more about mammoths, check out the Science Trek website.

You'll find it at Science Trek dot org.

(Music) ANNOUNCER: Presentation of Science Trek on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho; By the Idaho National Laboratory, mentoring talent and finding solutions for energy and security challenges; By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.