Shirlie Stone

Museum Marketing Officer

Mammoth's Tooth

I think this is just a lovely object. It seems incongruous that it once sat in the huge mouth of a Woolly Mammoth, a Yorkshire Woolly Mammoth to boot!

What was a mammoth?

This fossil is a mammoth molar tooth. Compare it to the size of the molar teeth in the back of your mouth! Mammoths lived in the last Ice Age about 10 000 years ago. They looked like elephants but had thick woolly hair to keep them warm. They used their large molar teeth to grind up the plants they ate. The cold climate meant the plants were very short and stunted and hard to chew.