Tooth - Woolly Mammoth

The woolly mammoth is the Old Stone Age’s most iconic creatures. Roughly as big as modern African elephants, this large tooth shows how big their jaws were, and their massive size too.

Woolly mammoths were well-adapted to colder temperatures, with a thick coating of fur, and short ears and tails to minimise heat loss.

Mammoths lived in Britain until as recently as 14,000 years ago, when changes in climate saw forests replace the grasslands they relied on for food.

Although it is unknown where this tooth was found, a mammoth skeleton was discovered in a brickfield to the south of Shacklewell Lane. At Stoke Newington, the extremely rare discovery of remains of a kill site was found in the 1880s, when a sharp stone tool was found in contact with a mammoth’s shoulder bone.

This tooth would have come from an older woolly mammoth, around 40 years old at the time of death. The rounded back edge is where the tooth would have met gum instead of another tooth, indicating it's position at the back of the upper jaw. The shallow depth of the enamel/dentine ridges on the tooth's surface suggests the mammoth ate a course diet e.g. grasses.

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