Get your teeth into this!

The Higgins Bedford is currently closed but when we reopen you can visit the Settlement Gallery to see our collections. In the Settlement Gallery there is a mammoth molar in the case called “Sculpted by Ice” (item no.2). They look amazing – and they are. 

For a start, mammoth molars are amongst the largest grinding teeth of any animal ever, averaging at around 15 cm in length. They needed them, for chewing the coarse grass and sedges that they lived on. It's said that mammoth teeth are as tough as any rock as more have survived throughout the years compared to their bones.

Did you know that, like us, mammoths had milk teeth and adult teeth? But unlike us, they had six sets in their lives. Once a tooth was worn down from grinding food, new molars grew from the back of the jaw, and moved forward to replace worn-out ones - just like modern elephants. This process continued until the sixth set was in place and was used for the rest of the mammoth's life. There were no more teeth to replace the sixth set once it was worn down which meant that mammoths struggled to grind down and eat their food.

We have molars, incisors and canine teeth. Mammoths didn’t have canines, and they only had four molars at a time, two at the top, two at the bottom. They had two incisors which grew throughout their lives – their tusks. You can read about Mammoth tusks in our previous post HERE.

Written by Sarah, Collections Volunteer.

Terrific Tuskers

Mammoth tusks are remarkable – you can see part of one in the Settlement gallery, in the “landscape and people” case (when we reopen). 

They are incisor teeth that grow from sockets in the upper jaw (there were no incisors on the lower jaw). Mammoths only had one adult set, although they had five adult sets of molars. The tusks could grow to incredible sizes. The longest ever recorded was 4.2m long and weighed a staggering 91kg! This came from a male, but it seems that females had them too. About a quarter of the length was in the socket.

Mammoth tusks are bigger than those of modern elephants, and much more curved. They used them for similar tasks – manipulating things, foraging, and of course, fighting, but perhaps also to sweep snow off the grass they ate. Modern elephants are right or left “tusked” (in the same way as we are with our hands), and mammoths may have been too. So one tusk was often more worn than the other.

And if you want to know how old a mammoth was when it died, you can count the rings inside the tusk – just like you can do with a tree! This is because the tusks continued to grow throughout the animal’s life. 

Written by Sarah, Collections Volunteer.