Image: MammuthusMeridionalis1

Description: Two mammoth skeletal mounts on exhibit at the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris: a southern mammoth (the big skeleton in the foreground, Mammuthus meridionalis) and a woolly mammoth (the smaller skeleton in the background, Mammuthus primigenius). The big skeleton, the southern mammoth, was found in 1869 in the south of France and is constituted by fully fossilised bone in rock. The smaller one is subfossil bone from a frozen individual found in 1901 in the permafrost of the Lyakhov islands. This skeleton of a frozen woolly mammoth was given in 1912 by the Russian count Alexander Stenbock-Fermor to the Natural History Museum of France and is the only specimen that left Russia before the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917. Some parts of the skin had been preserved and are on exhibit in a nearby display cabinet. After the flesh was ripped off, the skeleton was mounted and exhibited as it is seen here as of 1958.
Title: MammuthusMeridionalis1
Credit: Mammuthus_meridionalis.JPG
Author: Mammuthus_meridionalis.JPG: Ghedo derivative work: LeDoux77
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No