The French find may hold the key to the evolutionary mystery of these incredible creatures
In northern France, paleontologists unearthed the skull of a steppe mammoth - "extremely rare", according to experts, reports the BBC.
Previously, researchers came across only the teeth of steppe mammoths and fragments of bones, against this background a whole skull is a real success.
According to one hypothesis, the skull belonged to an animal whose height was about 3.7 meters, which lived about 400 thousand years ago.
Scientists believe that this giant died at the age of 35.
Steppe mammoths are a link between the ancient mammoths, which are also called southern mammoths, and a later species, the so-called woolly mammoths.
This transitional form was the least known.
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It is believed that southern mammoths lived in the shroud and ate the leaves of trees and bushes. Analysis of the teeth of later varieties of giants suggests that they have switched to pasture.
Perhaps the new habits of animals became a response to climate change - the vegetation around them became less and less, respectively, the grass began to take up more and more space in the diet.
There is a theory according to which mammoths originally inhabited all of Eurasia. Then, when the world became colder and colder for two million years, steppe mammoths, more resistant to frost, appeared in the east of Asia.
With the onset of the Ice Age, they gradually ousted their predecessors.
Even later, when the Ice Age fully came into its own, the steppe mammoths evolved into woolly ones. This process originated in the north-east of Siberia, and then spread to other territories.
Some researchers, however, adhere to a different point of view, and believe that the center of evolution was Europe.