Researchers have revealed through a new study how the prehistoric kin of elephants, the mammoths, survived in harsh cold. Mammoths can be spotted in the continents of Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America.

Mammoths were giant like their modern relatives. Height of the largest known species of mammoth was 4 meters (13 feet) at the shoulder and weight of up to 8 tonnes (9 short tons).

Woolly mammoths had long and shaggy fur, small tails and ears to minimize frostbite. Their bodies had a lot of fat to keep the body warm in chilly environment in the tundra over 12,000 years ago.

Vincent Lynch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago, said, "They have this weird hump on their back, which is thought to be something like a camel hump - sort of a fat deposit that stored water and energy for the cold, dark winters".

A tad of DNA from wooly mammoths was discovered by a team of scientists from the University of Chicago. Researchers believe that the discovery could help them gain insight into how these giant creatures lived in the cold of the last Ice Age.

Comparisons between the DNA of woolly mammoths and DNA of the modern Asian elephant were recently held by Lynch and some of his colleagues.

They published the results in the journal Cell Reports, revealing that a lot of changes occurred between the genes of Asian elephants and mammoths.

The researchers said a specific gene in the mammoths helped them to be hairy and woolly.