Adams mammoth
Adams mammoth is the name of the first discovered by European scientists, complete skeleton of a woolly mammoth. The still covered with skin and soft tissue remains of the animal were discovered in 1799 in northeastern Siberia by Ossip Schumachow, an Evenk hunters. 1806 barg of German - Russian botanist Michael Friedrich Adams the skeleton and brought it to the Zoological Museum in Saint Petersburg.
Historical Background
In Europe, the first reports of mammoths in the years 1690 appeared. 1728 Hans Sloane published two articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which can be called the first scientific papers on the topic of mammoth. Sloane's reports were based on descriptions of travelers and some skeletal remains from Siberia and the UK. Although he treated the question of whether the mammoth was an elephant or not, he drew no conclusions. 1737 represented Johann Philipp Breyne the view that the fossil remains came from an elephant, but could not explain how an animal could get from the tropics to Siberia. He suspected it might have been washed up by the flood.
Between 1692 and 1806 only four finds of mammoth carcasses have been described. None of these findings was salvaged. 1798 was the French naturalist Georges Cuvier prove that distinguish the fossil remains of the Siberian mammoths from the bones of extant elephant species.
Fund history
Adams in 1805 as a participant in a research group that had the failure of its diplomatic mission of Count Yuri Golovkin connected to China to Siberia. After the failure of the mission, several members of the group remained on site to do research on. From the ivory hunters Roman Boltunow, had sold to the Schumachow the tusks of the animal, Adams learned in Yakutsk from the discovery of mammoths in the Lena Delta. With three Cossacks he sailed down the Lena to the mouth. End of June 1806, he arrived in Schumachows village. End of July, traveled Adams, Schumachow and ten men from the village Schumachows the place where the mammoths.
The accessible side of the mighty beast was already eaten by wolves, the meat had been fed in part by the local hunters to their dogs. Adam covered his entire skeleton, the skull with the ear, eye and scalp and the remains of soft tissues, most part of the skin, which he described as " of such extraordinary proportions that ten persons ... could they raise with great difficulty " and nearly forty pounds of hair. It lacked the tusks and a front leg and the trunk. The squad of Adams dissected the carcass of the animal and brought the items to Saint Petersburg. During the return trip, he bought a pair of tusks, which he believed, it would be the same, the Schumachow had sold to Boltunow.
Reconstruction of the mammoth
In St. Petersburg, Wilhelm Gottlieb Tilesius of Tilenau was commissioned to restore the animal. His task was made easier by the fact that the Kunstkammer, the skeleton of an Indian elephant had that he could use as a comparison object. Tilesius made replicas of wood to replace the missing leg bones. His work was one of the first attempts to reconstruct a fossil animal. The reconstruction was essentially correct, but Tilesius made a mistake in the arrangement of tusks. Instead inwardly he put them away to bent. It was not until 1899 the error was detected, however, the correct placement of the tusks remained until the 20th century, a subject of scientific debate.
Reception
Adams 's account of his journey was published in late 1807 and soon translated into other European languages. He circulated throughout Europe and America. Tilesius made some etchings of his recovery and sent them to other naturalists for review. Meanwhile, he was working on a detailed report on the skeleton, which was published in 1815.
The Adams mammoth is also inaccurately called Adams mammoth. This seems like a popular etymological interpretation of the name for the "first" to be mammoth, derived from Adam, the " first " people.