Giant Siberian woolly mammoth fossil wows shoppers at Abu Dhabi’s Marina Mall

A woolly mammoth believed to be 15,000 years old was unveiled at Marina Mall on Tuesday.

9 December 2015

The Siberian fossil of palaeolithic times stands about four metres tall and the bones alone weigh one tonne.

Nikolaos Kontos, head of marketing at Marina Mall, said he hoped the attraction would appeal to the local community and offer something different at the emirate’s original mall.

“It’s about offering a unique experience when people come to the mall. Instead of just shopping, they can witness one of the largest genuine fossils,” he said. “We have brought German specialists here to make sure it’s a genuine fossil. It’s one of the biggest males to be found in the world, one of about only 10.”

Alive, the animal would have been a whopping 10 to 12 tonnes and stand six or seven metres tall with its thick coat of hair. The wild beast, prey of the caveman, would have eaten between 60 and 300 kilograms of food a day and drunk 60 to 160 litres of water.

The event will promote palaentology to the public, said Dr Mark Beech, an archaeologist who is head of the coastal heritage and palaeontology section of the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority Historic Environment Department.

We don’t have a natural history museum in Abu Dhabi where fossils from this country can be put on display, so while it’s nice to have this, I would still like to see an institute where we can educate and promote the many finds we have made here in the UAE,” he said. “We have some very impressive fossils in our store that have been collected during the course of more than 20 years’ work on the 6 to 8-million-year-old Late Miocene fossil sites in Al Gharbia.”

Standing tall at four metres and weighing one tonne, the genuine fossil was discovered in the late 1990’s on the banks of the Irtysh River in Siberia, and is considered one of the largest and most complete fossils to have ever been discovered.

The behaviour of these legendary creatures, which mainly resided in Asia, Europe and North Africa, resembled that of modern elephants. Despite their large size – a fully grown Mammoth can weigh between up to eight tonnes, equivalent to the weight of a double-decker bus – they are known to be gentle creatures that mostly enjoyed grazing on fresh grass.

Their coats varied in colour between light and dark and were covered in fur, with an outer covering of long hairs and a shorter undercoat. They had short ears and tails to minimize frostbite. Little is known about the species’ extinction, but it is thought to have likely been due to climate change, human hunting or a combination of the two.

The permanent exhibit, situated at the rear side of the mall, is open to the public and free to visit during mall opening hours.

It was unveiled to an exclusive group of visitors, including the man behind the project itself, Sheikh Sultan bin Khalifa, adviser to the President and chairman of the National Investment Corporation. The event was hosted by Bahraini presenter Nada Shaibani.