Mastodon
Mastodons or Mastodonts are elephants of the extinct genus Mammut and the family Mammutidae. Mastodons became extinct about 11,000 years ago.
Mastodon Temporal range: early Pliocene – late Pleistocene, 5.3–0.011 mya
| |
---|---|
Mounted mastodon skeleton, Museum of the Earth. | |
Scientific classification | |
Kingdom: | |
Phylum: | |
Class: | |
Order: | |
Family: | †Mammutidae Hay, 1922
|
Genus: | †Mammut Blumenbach, 1799
|
Mastodons, with mammoths, modern elephants and various older families, are members of the order Proboscidea. As adults they stood between 2.5 and 3 meters (8-10 feet) at the shoulder and weighed between 3500 and 5400 kilograms (4-6 tons).
Mastodons were browsers on leaves and branches, as shown by their molar teeth.
Two species
M. americanum was the American mastodon, and M. pacificus was the Pacific mastodon. They are the youngest and best-known species of the genus. Mastodons disappeared from North America as part of a mass extinction of most of the Pleistocene megafauna.[1]
Recent discovery
Stone tools and bones from a butchered mastodon were found at the bottom of a river in Florida. After a four-year investigation, researchers decided that humans lived there and made a meal of a mastodon 14,550 years ago.[2]
Mastodon Media
Exhuming the First American Mastodon, 1806 painting by Charles Willson Peale
Comparison of woolly mammoth (L) and American mastodon (R)
Excavation of a specimen in a golf course in Heath, Ohio, 1989
Restoration of an American mastodon with less hair by Heinrich Harder
M. pacificus female and calf at the George C. Page Museum
M. americanum male and female, University of Michigan
Restoration of an American mastodon herd by Charles R. Knight