The following is my translation of an article called: Das Mammut (Elephas primigenius Blumb.) von Kustos EW Pfizenmayer. It appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1921, Heft 9, Seiten 237-240. As is typical for meanies like me, the cited illustrations are so attractive that I've kept them to myself. You may draw your own, should you wish. Several geographic names have been left in the original German, seeing as I'm not aware of appropriate English alternatives. I've also not updated the scientific name. That would be Mammuthus primigenius in present usage.
I'm not aware of any previous translations.
Trevor Dykes.

The mammoth (Elephas primigenius Blumb.) by Kustos EW Pfizenmayer
The Academy of the Sciences in Petersburg sent out a number of expeditions during the course of the 19th century to find mammoth bodies in Siberia, and they provided premiums for reporting them to local authorities so as to salvage them for science. The earlier expeditions were always too late to reach the localities, due to the great distance of the capital of the giant Russian empire from the locations of the fossil pachyderms in the remote and road-less tundra of northeastern Siberia. They either found absolutely nothing or else only few remains of the bodies recovered following difficult journeys, lasting for months, in sleighs and travelling carriages from Moscow, and for as far as the railway then led. And so, until the beginning of the 20th century, there was only the single well preserved mammoth discovery, a body recovered by the botanist, Adams, from the estuary of the River Lena in 1799, that the researcher had only been able to save as he happened to be collecting in the nearby Yakutsk area, and was able to reach the location immediately. The soft tissue remains and the exhibited remains of Adams' mammoth skeleton in the Academy Museum in Petersburg were the most complete and, therefore, the most informative traces for science that existed for Elephas primigenius, and the illustration of Adams' mammoth skeleton could be found in all scientific text books, and served as a model for the presentation of discoveries from West Europe.

Both of the most recent expeditions of the Petersburg Academy, to recover mammoth remains discovered in the Irkutsk region, have enjoyed much more favourable chances for success as they could use the new Siberian Railway to reach as far as Irkutsk, and reach the localities months earlier than was possible for all earlier expeditions. That naturally meant that the remains could be quickly obtained in situ, where the fossilized animal bodies had come to light from the eternally frozen ground of the high north, and this is an essential precondition for a scientific investigation and a timely excavation, before any remains fall victim to predators and damaging influences of the weather.

The results of the 1901 expedition sent to the Berezivka, a right tributary of the Kolyma which reaches the Ice Sea opposite Bäreninsel (Additional note: That translates as 'Bear Island'. However, that name would most commonly indicate an island belonging to Norway. This is presumably a different place.) excellently surpassed all expectations. Not only was a complete skeleton obtained, but the recovery of most of the soft tissue was also managed, and this was despite the members having to contend for six weeks long, from the middle of September until the end of October, with a difficult challenge in finally -30°C in the wilderness. The greatest care was required to exhume the body from the frozen ground (Ill. 1), and a series of photographs was taken. The final stages of excavation were only possible because one had built a log hut over the partly freed body, placed an oven within it, and this heating caused the rock hard, frozen body to thaw. Only in this manner would it have been possible to preserve the thick fur of the skin, covered with about 50cm long guard hairs and more thickly grown wool, of this fossil body with an age that has been estimated to be at least 25,000 years. This fur had to be removed in parts and packaged as, because of the rotting processes that commenced with the thaw, it no longer remained secure on the corpse.

The areas of skin from the head and back were remounted onto the fossil pachyderm in the precise positions in which they were found, and the completely preserved skeleton was put on display. It was due to the discovery of this 'Berezivka' mammoth body, that it could be shown that the tusks of the mammoth were significantly differently arranged than had been previously assumed. The ends of the spiralling and curved tusks do not namely diverge, but rather converge, ie. they run inwards. The mammoth possessed many less tail bones than the presently living elephants, and also had no first toe, the innermost one, on the front and rear feet, and that is also a difference from both extant elephant genera. At the rear, the animal carried a round, bulging flap of skin at the lower end of the tail, and this would close over its anus as a form of protection against cold. Above all, it was protected from cold by the evenly distributed, thick covering of hair over the entire body, and this allowed it to live in the cold climate of Siberia, where it persisted until the end of the Diluvian period. The mounted skin and the skeleton (Ill. 2 and 3) of the Berezivka mammoth body provide the finest attraction at the zoological museum of the Academy of Sciences in Petersburg.

The further expedition undertaken by the Academy, in 1908, supported the excavation at the stream of Sangajurach (in the coastal region of the Ice Sea opposite the New Siberian Islands), did not find as complete a specimen as came to light on the Berezivka but it had a complete trunk (Ill. 4), and that had been missing from the Berezivka body, and so this final Siberian has completed our knowledge of the soft parts of Elaphus primigenius.

The trunk gives science a complete novelty; only the tip of this grasping organ had served to feed Arctic foxes prior to the arrival of the expedition, along with other areas of the fossil body, but this characteristic symbol of Proboscicans was otherwise so well preserved that mucus probes from the trunk canals could be taken at the discovery site, and their bacterial content will be examined in Petersburg.

The part of the head around the eye was also preserved (Ill. 5), and the eye itself could even be removed from the head, and very carefully conserved in alcohol. The apple of the eye and sight nerve are so well preserved from this 10,000 year old corpse that they are still entirely suitable for an anatomical examination.

The whole rump of the mammoth was covered by a fairly evenly long and thick coat of hair, and this applies for the Berezinka mammoth body as well as for the newer find from River Sangajurach. It was possible to gain large areas of skin from the rump and legs, for which the front and rear feet were still present, with the skin being in very good condition with guard and woll hair still securely implanted. The guard hairs of the front and rear feet averaged 35cm. A sample from the upper part of the right front foot also had guard hairs of this length (Ill. 6). The skin sections from the rump, one for the upper part and another from the side which had already been separated from the body during excavation, had guard hairs reaching an average of 45cm. The very thick growing wool beneath the guard hairs had an average length of 2.5cm.

The colour of the guard hairs may have originally been a dark red-brown toned somewhat darker or lighter on some body areas. With the preserved remains, the hair has bleached to a lighter, duller fox-red to off-blond colour. The wool hair has an off-blond to yellow-brown tone.

Both new expeditions of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences have added previously unknown information to our knowledge of Elephas primigenius

, and the mammoth that lived for hundreds of thousands of years across large parts of the Old and New World during the Pleistocene, and divided into a large number of various races during this long time, is now the best known fossil animal and, indeed, even among the general public.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.