First, before we consider the mammoths, I’d like you to pause for a moment and imagine some of the animals that lived even earlier, during the age of the dinosaurs. Picture these animals living and breathing in their natural environments. What do you see? Perhaps the terrible teeth of Tyrannosaurus rex slavering toward prey, or rows of plates proudly displayed over the arching back of Stegosaurus. You may imagine bat winged pterosaurs soaring over head, titanic long-necked sauropod dinosaurs, graceful plesiosaurs darting after fish in the seas.
If I asked you where these animals are today, you would tell me that they’re all gone from the world. Extinct. And how do we know about these vanished creatures? You can answer that question, too: from fossils—the petrified traces these animals left behind. Bones. Teeth. Muddy footprints hardened into stone.