In 1959 Zhou, M. Z described what he called a new species of mammoth, "M. sungari", that gained recent notoriety as the largest proboscidean due to a tall and long composite skeletal mount based on two individuals found in 1980. However, Wei "et al." (2010), who restudied the fossils referred to "M sungari", considered this species to be a junior synonym of "M. trogontherii". The authors state that some of the fossils are referrable to "M. trogontherii", while the others can be referred to "M. primigenius", according to morphological characters and measurements.