"The mammoth is the iconic animal of the Ice Age.
Alongside sabretooth cats, cave bears, cave lions, wolly rhinos, giant sloths and other extinct creatures, mammoths
roamed th cold open landscapes.The Ice Age spanned the last 2.5 million years, but mammoths were still in their heyday only 20,000 years ago, and became extinct as recently as 4,000 years ago. That is less than a hundreth of one per cent of the time since th extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago." The average temperature during the Ice Age was around 8°C. That is 10° less than the average temperature today.
"A brief look at a mammoth immediately suggests that it was related to the living elephants. The large size, general body shape, and especially the presence of tusks and trunk, make this clear. In fact, the mammoth was so closely related to the living elephants that it is classified in the same biological family. The mammoth was, in effect, the elephant of the northern hemishpere. With its furry coat and other features, it was adapted to the cooler climates of the north, where conditions during the Ice Age were often more extreme than those today."
by Adrian Lister-Mammoths, 2014
Mammoth and elephants come from one mammalian group known as Proboscidea .The Proboscidea is the order belonging to the Mammalia Group. The earliest known fossil of this order is named Eritherium and it was discovered in Morocco in 2009. It barely resembled of the elephant today, by the lack of trunk or big tusks, instead it did have enlarged incisor teeth, the precursors of tusks.