Mammoth known as "Choulans mammoth" (Mammuthus intermedius)

During the Quaternary Period, between 2.6 million and 10,000 years ago, there was a succession of very cold and temperate periods, a pattern linked to cyclic variations in the Earth’s orbit. Alpine glaciers spread over the Lyon area, whilst at the same time landscapes of steppe and tundra were forming with their populations of mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses.

The skeleton of the Choulans mammoth was discovered in Lyon in 1859, just two kilometres from the current Musée des Confluences.