What the heck is a lek?
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
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A fossilised tooth
This fossilised mammoth molar was found in Blandford Forum and dates to around one million years ago. It is believed to have belonged to a large species of mammoth called Mammuthus meridionalis.
The term ‘mammoth’ covers a range of species that lived across Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America from around 6 million years ago until about 4,000 years ago. This tooth is believed to be from a species known as Mammuthus meridionalis. This species lived from around 2.5 million years ago until about 800,000 years ago. Mammoths were very similar to modern elephants, however they typically had larger, spiralling tusks and some species had thick fur in order to survive freezing temperatures.
Mammoth species varied in size with some, including Mammuthus meridionalis, reaching a shoulder height of 4.5m, considerably larger than modern elephants, and other dwarf species being only 1m in shoulder height. Most woolly mammoth species were of a similar size to modern African bush elephants, about 3m at the shoulder.
Key Stage 2 Science – Living things and their habitats
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery EYFS workshops: We’re are going on a mammoth hunt, Tracks and Trails.
Dorset Museum & Art Gallery Key Stage 2 workshop: Stones, Bones and Metals.
Teeth are one of the main identifying features of ancient mammoths. By counting the number of ridges on a mammoth’s molars, palaeontologists can determine which species the tooth belonged to. Earlier species of mammoths tend to have fewer ridges, whereas more recent species tend to have a greater number of ridges. This is because, over time, mammoth species had to evolve more tooth ridges to chew up tougher food sources. This species had around 13 molar ridges. Early species had 8-10 ridges, whereas the most recent species had up to 28 ridges.
The majority of mammoth remains that have been discovered are in the form of fossilised teeth and bones. However, mammoths have also been discovered frozen and relatively well preserved in Arctic regions of the planet, such as Siberia. Frozen mammoths can still retain skin, hair, and other soft tissue that does not survive fossilisation.
Scientists have proposed using these tissues to create new mammoths through a process called cloning. This would involve taking cells from long deceased mammoths and merging them with the egg cells of genetically similar modern Asian elephants. These cells would then be implanted into a female Asian elephant that would give birth to a mammoth-elephant hybrid.
Animal cloning of this kind was first successfully completed by researchers at the Roslin Institute in Scotland, who cloned a sheep named Dolly in 1996. Dolly lived until 2003 and produced 6 lambs during her lifetime. She was the first example of adult animal cells being successfully used in cloning. So far cloning of mammoths has not been possible due to the mammoth cells being too badly damaged by the extreme cold conditions they have been preserved in. However, cloning raises ethical issues about whether it is right to revive a species that has been extinct for thousands of years. On the other hand, cloning could be useful in preventing the extinction of endangered animals or reviving animals that have recently gone extinct due to humans.
The extinction of mammoths was caused by a mixture of climate and human factors. For many early species, naturally changing climate led to their extinction as the Earth warmed and cooled faster than they could
adapt. However, humans contributed to the extinction of later mammoth species by hunting them. The most recent mammoths survived until around 4,000 years ago due to their isolation from humans on Wrangel Island off the Siberian coast, but they eventually died out nonetheless. Nowadays, humans have an even greater impact on the natural world, causing animal extinctions at a rate between 1,000 and 10,000 times greater than the natural rate. This is because of destruction of habitat, pollution, hunting, and disruption of ecosystems and biodiversity.
This molar was found in Blandford Forum and gives an insight into Dorset’s environment and animal life during the Pleistocene period (about 2.58 million years ago to about 11,700 years ago). Around 1 million years ago, it may have been possible to see herds of mammoths roaming the Dorset countryside, albeit a very different landscape than we see today. At this time, Great Britain was connected by land to continental Europe and much of it was covered in polar ice. Other animals that lived in Dorset during the Pleistocene epoch include extinct animals such as woolly rhinoceroses and woolly mammoths, and animals still alive today, like red deer, horses, and bison.
Males great bustards perform spectacular courtship displays, gathering at a ‘lek’ or small display ground to try to impress the females.
The great bustard has a dignified slow walk but tends to run when disturbed, rather than fly.
The hen-bird on display at The Salisbury Museum was one of the last great bustards to be eaten in the town!