Mammoth Tusk @museum.de

M2: Hello and welcome to the Stadtisches Museum Bruchsal, the local municipal museum. We're delighted you've found your way here. Join us as we explore the history of our town and region. So let's get started. Or, as we say in the local dialect, "Alsfort, kumt mit."

F: We'll begin with a brief journey back in time, one that will take us some 700,000 years into the past, to the Pleistocene era. The Ice Age.

M: Temperatures are lower than today, precipitation is quite rare, and the summers are short. Instead of dense forests, Central Europe is mainly covered by vast steppes – with grasses, shrubs and bushes.

F: Roaming these steppes is a mighty beast: the steppe mammoth, sometimes called the steppe elephant.

M: It was the largest of all mammoths – as well as the largest proboscid, or trunked animal, that ever lived. Adult males could reach a shoulder height of more than four metres. They weighed at least ten tonnes. Their huge tusks grew to a length of up to five metres. Here on the wall, you can see part of one of those colossal tusks.

F: Unlike its ancestors, the steppe mammoth had fur, so it was able to adapt to a changing climate. Another difference compared to earlier mammoth species was its diet. While its predecessors still fed mainly on leaves and shrubs, the steppe mammoth subsisted primarily on grass. You only have to look at the lower jaw with its massive, flattened molars, to see the evidence.

M: But the lower jaw also tells us something else. As the mammoth evolved, its jaw grew shorter and shorter. That meant there was no longer enough space to accommodate a whole set of teeth. Nature came up with a clever solution: horizontal tooth replacement.

F: During this process, a molar in the mammoth's jaw would migrate from the back to the front, becoming gradually worn down during its journey. The next replacement molar would already be pushing in from behind. Eventually, the old, worn molar was pushed out and discarded. Each subsequent molar was larger than its predecessor and had more dental ridges.

M: The steppe mammoth later evolved into the woolly mammoth, probably the most iconic Ice Age beast. With its thick, shaggy fur, it was perfectly adapted to conditions during the glacial periods. This final mammoth species went extinct roughly 12,000 years ago. For a long time, scientists believed that humans alone were responsible for wiping out these animals. But today's experts think it likely that their extinction was in part due to a changing climate.