But it’s not the first Baby Mammoth found. I picked up a textbook on fossils from the AMNH back when I was a kid (I was seriously into paleontology – this was a college-level text) which had a picture of a baby mammoth, with head, trunk, and forelegs. The trunk seemed to be stitched on, badly (making it look like FrankenMammoth), and I suspect it was missing a lot of the back end. This one;s better preserved, but it’s not the first.
There are claims that other impressive prehistoric beasts were, as well. I’d read writers who suggested that Giant Sloths (Megatherium and others) were alive until fairly recently, and at first was unconvinced. But I learned that apparent sloth droppings were found to contain plants that had been cut, indicating that they were being fed by people, and that what is apparently sloth skins have been found. These are filled with pebble-like “calculi”, as if the skin contained a multitude of rocks. Whatever it was from, it isn’t any currently existing creature. I’ve seen such skin pieces at the American Museum of Natural History.
Wooly Rhinoceroses also overlapped human culture, and have been depicted in cave paintings, but I don’t know when they died out, and i’ve never heard of froxzen carcasses being found.
That’s it! The Mammoth became extinct because they were moved to Egypt to help with pyramid construction, thus also explaining where some of the previously unaccounted for massive lifting forces that would have been required came from. It all fits!
You know, you hear about these kinds of animals existing, but until you see one and think “Huh, a baby elephant”, it doesn’t really hit home that you haven’t really been around long and really don’t know much.