Buds The absence of any trees in his ecosystem marks a significant change in the usual diet of Siberian woolly mammoths (Mammuthus primigenius). In all other Siberian mammoth dung analyzed to date, scientists have recovered twigs of alder, birch, larch, and spruce. Mammoths nibbled these trees to get nutrients lacking in grass. Since no trees of any kind lived in his neighborhood, the Yukagir mammoth may have consumed the dwarf willow shrubs (including this bud, with nascent leaves visible within) to get vitamins lacking in the meadow grasses.
