Steppe mammoth (exhibit)

The Trogonterium Mammoth () or Steppe Mammoth exhibit is a mammoth skeleton in Azov History, Archaeology and Paleontology Museum-Reserve.
History.
Steppe mammoths are an extinct species of mammoths that lived in Eurasia in the Middle Pleistocene. Steppe mammoth, as a species, was separated from the Southern mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis) in the Upper Pleistocene and displaced it in the Middle Pleistocene about from 750 to 500 thousand years ago. Steppe mammoth had a short skull and long tusks. Having a height of up to 4.7 meters and weighing up to 10 tons, it was the largest type of proboscis. The skeleton, which is installed in the Azov Museum, is 4.5 meters high. The tusks of male Steppe mammoths reached a length of 5 meters and had curved ends that are less twisted than Woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) used to have. The tusks of female Steppe mammoths were thinner and less curved than those of female. This species of mammoths lived in Western Siberia, in present-day Kazakhstan, Rostov Oblast, Stavropol Krai and Krasnodar Krai.
The skeleton that is now presented in Azov Museum was found on 11 December 1964 near Azov in Kagalnitsky sand pit. The excavator operator, who was working at the sand career, discovered the remains of tusks. At the same site, several more bones of the same skeleton were found. This same winter, the whole skeleton was excavated.
The Azov Museum, where the skeleton was brought, did not have a paleontological laboratory and restoration specialists. Assistance in the preservation of bones was provided by the workers of Zoological Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Vadim Evgenevich Garutt was engaged in conservation work. Restoration and production of missing bones took about ten years.
After the restoration, in 1980 all the bones of the skeleton were transported to the Azov Museum.
In 1999, in the Kagalnitsky quarry, the skeleton of a female Trogonterian mammoth was found and excavated. Now it is also presented at the paleontological collection of the Azov Museum.
Incomplete skeletons of steppe mammoths are kept in the Museum of Lyons (France, 1869), in the Geological and Paleontological Museum of the University of Münster (Germany, 1923), in the Museum of Zaugerhausen (Germany, 1930), in the Paleontological Museum of Odessa (Ukraine, 1940) and in the Museum of Nature and Man in Khanty-Mansiysk. Among them, only the Azov Museum-Reserve has two skeletons of a male and a female mammoth.