8. Which Happened First: the Building of the Great Pyramids, or the Extinction of Woolly Mammoths?
Woolly mammoths flourished during the Pleistocene epoch. The extinct pachyderms were roughly the size of modern African elephants, with males reaching shoulder heights greater than 11 feet, and weighing in at around 6 tons. Females reached nearly 10 feet at the shoulder, weighed around 4 tons, and calved newborns that weighed around 200 pounds at birth.
The furry pachyderms are most commonly associated with the Ice Age. Their shaggy coats, comprised of outer layers of long guard hairs atop a shorter undercoat, made them well adapted to the harsh winter environment. Other evolutionary adaptations included short ears and tail, to minimize frostbite and heat loss. That enabled them to thrive in the Mammoth Steppe – the earth’s most extensive biome during the ice age, extending from Canada and across Eurasia to Spain, and from the Arctic Circle to China. Were they still around when the Great Pyramid was built?