WOOLLY MAMMOTH SKULL Mammuthus primigenius Upper... - Lot 3 - Giquello

Lot 3
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Estimation :
60000 - 80000 EUR
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Result : 156 000EUR
WOOLLY MAMMOTH SKULL Mammuthus primigenius Upper... - Lot 3 - Giquello
WOOLLY MAMMOTH SKULL Mammuthus primigenius Upper Pleistocene (- 50000/-10000 years) Poland H. 140 - L. 110 - D. 190 cm The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), an extinct species close to the elephant, is characterized by a mantle composed of three different layers of hair, a small trunk and two long curved tusks that spiral in opposite directions and continue to curve until the tips converge towards each other, sometimes crossing. The imposing size and particular shape of the tusks have caused much debate: they were probably used in intraspecific fights or to attract females and intimidate rivals. Because of their curvature, the tusks were not adapted for stabbing, but they may have been used for striking, as indicated by the lesions on some fossil scapulae. Woolly mammoth tusks were traded in Asia long before Europeans became aware of them. Güyük, the Khan of the Mongols in the 13th century, is said to have sat on a throne made of mammoth ivory. From the 19th century onwards, woolly mammoth ivory became a popular and well-known product, used as a raw material for many products and providing a sustainable alternative to elephant ivory. When the idea of the existence of large elephants began to spread in Europe, some believed that they were the remains of elephants that had escaped from the army of Hannibal and Pyrrhus of Epirus when they crossed the Swiss Alps, others that they had been transported from the tropics to the Arctic by the biblical universal flood. In 1722, Peter the Great of Russia began to subsidize scientific expeditions to try to recover at least one specimen, but it was not until 1799, near the Lena Delta, that the Siberian hunter Ossip Schumachov finally found a mammoth engulfed in the ice. The fascination for this extinct animal persists to this day, so much so that several private and public groups in the United States and Russia are attempting to revive this species through cloning processes from samples frozen in the permafrost.
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