Mammoth

A prehistoric genus of elephant, often with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of hair. Unlike modern elephants, the mammoth was not a tropical animal: its frozen remains have been found in the northern parts of Siberia.

It is a common misconception that mammoths were much larger than modern elephants, an error that has led to "mammoth" being used as a adjective meaning "very big". In fact, most species of mammoth were about as large as a modern Indian elephant, and fossils of a species of dwarf mammoth have been found on remote islands off the Siberian East coast.

see also: mastodont? mastodon?