15.2" Woolly Mammoth Jaw Section - Germany

This beautiful fossil is a partial lower jaw of a juvenile Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), from the Rhine River, Germany and is between 20 and 50 thousand years old. This amazing example is the left mandible (lower jaw) with P4 and M1 molars locked in position. These teeth show feeding wear and the prisms (hard enamel structures), dentine and cementum are in very good condition. Both teeth show the chewing surface but the rear tooth also shows the unused plates that will form the new tooth surface as the old one wears away. The front plates of the P4 tooth have broken off and the hole in the bone shows the roots of the M1 tooth.

The P4 tooth is the last of the "baby" teeth and is the front tooth in this jaw. The M1 will gain a larger chewing surface as it wears down. When P4 is completely worn, M1 will be at peak size.

Comes with display stand.

The Woolly Mammoth (Mammuthus primegenius) is an iconic Pleistocene animal. It had long, wooly hair, tusks that extended up to 9 feet, and stood about 12 feet tall. They ranged across the northern hemisphere and were one of the most abundant Pleistocene creatures, ranging from eastern Eurasia throughout most of North America. Their existence overlapped with that of humans: early cave paintings have been discovered depicting these massive mammals, and humans likely hunted them to extinction in some areas.

They are also some of the most studied prehistoric animals in part because many carcasses have bene preserved in the Siberian permafrosts, keeping skin, muscle tissues, and even their distinctive woolly hair intact. Recent genomic sequencing of chromosomal DNA in some of these preserved specimens has revealed that Woolly Mammoths are most closely related to African elephants: their chromosomal DNA is up to 99.5 percent identical.


The gravel deposits along the Rhine River used to produce a large number of Pleistocene fossils while miners quarried for gravel aggregate. They have become much harder to come by in recent years as the quarry operations have become more mechanized, often destroying fossils in the process.
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DETAILS
SPECIES
Mammuthus primigenius
LOCATION
Rhine River, Germany
SIZE
Jaw 15.2" long, molars 6.5" long
CATEGORY
SUB CATEGORY
ITEM
#123608
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