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The Adams mammoth is the name given to the first full woolly mammoth, species Mammuthus primigenius, skeleton to be documented in the history of modern science. It was identified and recovered in 1806, by Mikhail Adams, who was a botanist but recognized the implications of the find.[1] Adams heard about it while passing through Yakutsk, where it was found on the frozen shores of the Lena river.[2]
While the first modern Western documentation of a mammoth occurred almost 100 years earlier in 1728 (based on a few bones), it was not recognized as a separate species, not even definitively elephantine. By 1738, Johann Philipp Breyne argued convincingly that mammoth fossils represented some kind of elephant, but could not explain why a tropical animal would be found in such cold areas as Siberia; he ended up blaming it on the biblical Great Flood. By 1796, Georges Cuvier had determined mammoths to be a separate species from normal elephants, and extinct, setting all of the necessary groundwork for the Adams Mammoth.
The Adams mammoth is often mistakenly referred to as Adam's mammoth, even by experts who know better.[3] It appears to be folk etymology; people assume it's referred to by this name because it was the "first", like Adam.
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