The article contains a biography of the famous Russian paleontologist V.E. Garutt (1917–2002), the oldest research worker of the Zoological institute of Russian Academy of Sciences, who studied the Pleistocene elephants of Northern Eurasia. He published more than 70 scientific papers on the origin and evolution of elephants of mammoth line, the morphology, changeability and features of the development of ancient proboscides. V.E. Garutt suggested two subfamilies Primelephantinae and Loxodontinae. He is the author of several taxa of fossil elephants of the generic, specific and subspecific levels. On his initiative, the skeleton of the Taimyr mammoth was adopted as the neotype of the woolly mammoth Mammuthus primigenius. He actively defended the independence of the genus Archidiskodon. A number of famous and important for the science paleontological specimens (skulls and skeletons of southern elephants, trogontherine and woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses and elasmotherium) were restored and mounted by V.E. Garutt. They adorn a number of museums and institutes in Russia (St. Petersburg, Stavropol, Pyatigorsk, Azov, Rostov-on-Don) and abroad (Tbilisi, Vilnius, Edersleben, Sangerhausen). In addition, V.E. Garutt was an active popularizer of paleontological science. He collected a scientific archive on the remains of elephants from many regions of the former Soviet Union and some countries of Western Europe, which is now stored in the Azov museum-reserve (Azov). Several grateful pupils began their way in paleontology under the leader ship of V.E. Garutt. And they continue active work nowadays.
Steller’s sea cow genome suggests this species began going extinct before the arrival of Paleolithic humans