A study by Chinese and British paleontologists has found that the Steppe mammoth may have originated near Zhangjiakou, a city in north China's Hebei Province.
   
Mammoth fossils, about 1.66 million years old, were found in Nihewan Site in Zhangjiakou's Yangyuan County and Yuxian County, about 100 km from Beijing. As the oldest found, the fossils date the species' origin age about 500,000 years earlier than the previous study.
   
The conclusion was made by Jin Changzhu with the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wei Guangbiao with the Chongqing Nature Museum, Xie Fei with the Hebei Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage, and Adrian M. Lister with the University College London.
   
According to a report made by Lister and a Russian researcher A.V. Sher in 2001, the mammoth originated in Russia's Siberia about 1.2 million years ago. The viewpoint has been widely accepted.
   
Steppe mammoth is a key evolutionary link between Mammuthus meridionalis living in the forests in Temperate Zone and Mammuthusprimigenius living in cold Siberia.
   
Due to its thick riverbed, lake bed and loess deposits, many mammal fossils have been uncovered at China's Nihewan Site.

(Xinhua News Agency March 24, 2005)