Mammuthus meridionalis
extinct species of mammoth (Mammuthus)
Mammuthus meridionalis, sometimes called the southern mammoth (in reference to the species name meridionalis, which is Latin for "southern") is an extinct species of mammoth native to Eurasia during the Early Pleistocene. Reaching a size exceeding modern elephants, unlike later Eurasian mammoth species, it was largely native to temperate climates and probably did not have a thick layer of fur. First appearing around 2.5 million years ago, probably descending from Mammuthus rumanus, it survived latest in Europe until around 800,000 years ago when it was replaced by the steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii) and the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus). It is the likely ancestor of the dwarf Mammuthus creticus on the island of Crete.
Taxonomy
Mammuthus meridionalis was originally named by Filippo Nesti in 1825 as Elephas meridionalis based on remains collected from the Upper Valdarno region in Tuscany, Italy, dating to the Early Pleistocene, around 1.8 million years ago.
The taxonomy of extinct elephants was complicated by the early 20th century, and in 1942, Henry Fairfield Osborn's posthumous monograph on the Proboscidea was published, wherein he used various taxon names that had previously been proposed for mammoth species, including replacing Mammuthus with Mammonteus, as he believed the former name to be invalidly published. Mammoth taxonomy was simplified by various researchers from the 1970s onwards, all species were retained in the genus Mammuthus, and many proposed differences between species were instead interpreted as intraspecific variation. The name Archidiskodon meridionalis is retained by some Russian researchers for the species.
Description
M. meridionalis was a large proboscidean, exceeding modern elephants in size. A mature adult male known from a mostly complete skeleton displayed at Forte Spagnolo, L'Aquila, Italy, estimated to be approximately 3.97–4.05 m (13.0–13.3 ft) tall at the shoulder in the flesh, was volumetrically estimated to weigh 10.7–11.4 tonnes (11.8–12.6 short tons).
The public source identifies “Mammuthus meridionalis” as extinct species of mammoth (Mammuthus). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mammuthus, meridionalis and extinct.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q550390. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1825 and 1942.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mammuthus meridionalis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.