The Mastodon which means " breast teeth " in Greek, is an extinct mammal that lived in the Pleistocene 10,000 to 11,000 years ago. About 30 million years ago (give or take a few million years), a population of prehistoric elephants in Africa branched off into a group that eventually included the genus Mammut as well as the lesser-known ancestral pachyderms Eozygodon and Zygolophodon. [5] Johann Friedrich Blumenbach assigned the scientific name Mammut to the American "incognitum" remains in 1799, under the assumption that they belonged to mammoths. [33] They apparently did not disperse southward to South America, it being speculated that this was because of a dietary specialization on a particular type of vegetation. Mammoths ranged from Alaska to California, and over to Arkansasand Florida, while sabertooth cats have been found in both California and Florida. A 2020 analysis of mtDNA from American mastodon remains collected in eastern Beringia indicated they belonged to two genetically divergent clades.
The clades were dated to different interglacials, suggesting a repeating pattern of colonization during an interglacial followed by extirpation during the subsequent glacial advance. [12], Like modern elephants, the females were smaller than the males. [1] Mastodons lived in herds and were predominantly forest dwelling animals that fed on a mixed diet obtained by browsing and grazing with a seasonal preference for browsing, similar to living elephants. Mastodons and Mammoths are often confused—which is understandable since they were both giant, shaggy, prehistoric elephants that roamed the plains of Pleistocene North America and Eurasia from two million to as recently as 20,000 years ago. M. americanum, the American mastodon, is the youngest and best-known species of the genus. The mystery animal became known as the "incognitum". [34], Mastodons are typically depicted with a thick woolly mammoth-like coat of hair, but there is no preserved evidence for this. [1] Mastodons lived in herds and were predominantly forest-dwelling animals that lived on a mixed diet obtained by browsing and grazing, somewhat similar to their distant relatives, modern elephants, but probably with greater emphasis on browsing. [30], Modern reconstructions based on partial and skeletal remains reveal that mastodons were very similar in appearance to elephants and, to a lesser degree, mammoths, though not closely related to either one. [46], Fossil evidence indicates that mastodons probably disappeared from North America about 10,500 years ago[1] as part of a mass extinction of most of the Pleistocene megafauna that is widely believed to have been a result of human hunting pressure. [24] The following cladogram shows the placement of the American mastodon among other proboscideans, based on hyoid characteristics:[25] [22][23], Mammut is a genus of the extinct family Mammutidae, related to the proboscidean family Elephantidae (mammoths and elephants), from which it originally diverged approximately 27 million years ago. Cuvier assigned the name mastodon (or mastodont) - meaning "breast tooth" (Ancient Greek: μαστός "breast" and ὀδούς, "tooth"),[6][7] - for the nipple-like projections on the crowns of the molars. Its name means "nipple tooth". [26] However, it is no longer considered valid,[27] leaving only five valid species. No one knows for sure what precipitated their demise, though it was likely a combination of climate change, increased competition for accustomed food sources, and (possibly) hunting by early human settlers, who knew that a single Mastodon could feed an entire tribe for a week, and clothe it for years! All of these proboscids ranged across the expanse of Pliocene and Pleistocene North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene epoch.
It lived in western North America from the late Miocene to the late Pleistocene. There is one unfortunate thing Mastodons share in common with Woolly Mammoths: both of these elephant ancestors went extinct about 11,000 years ago, shortly after the last Ice Age.
[13], Based on the characteristics of mastodon bone sites, it can be inferred that, as in modern proboscideans, the mastodon social group consisted of adult females and young, living in bonded groups called mixed herds. Other anatomists noted that the teeth of mammoths and elephants differed from those of the "incognitum", which possessed rows of large conical cusps, indicating that they were dealing with a distinct species. Dinosaur Pedia Wikia is a FANDOM Lifestyle Community. 10 Facts About Mastodons 01. [32] Mastodons had cusp-shaped teeth, very different from mammoth and elephant teeth (which have a series of enamel plates), well-suited for chewing leaves and branches of trees and shrubs. Mammut, also known as a Mastodon, was a mammutid proboscidean which lived approximately 5 million to 10,000 years ago – from the Late Miocene Period through the Late Pleistocene Period. In 1705, in the town of Claverack, New York, a farmer discovered a fossilized tooth weighing a whopping five pounds. The change was met with resistance, and authors sometimes applied "Mastodon" as an informal name; consequently it became the common term for members of the genus. [28][29] The remains are thought to be 50,000 to 130,000 years old. [29] The rate of mtDNA sequence change in proboscideans was found to be significantly lower than in primates. American Mastodons are like the woolly mammoth, their close cousin, but were slightly smaller and had less fur. .mw-parser-output table.clade{border-spacing:0;margin:0;font-size:100%;line-height:100%;border-collapse:separate;width:auto}.mw-parser-output table.clade table.clade{width:100%}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-label{width:0.7em;padding:0 0.15em;vertical-align:bottom;text-align:center;border-left:1px solid;border-bottom:1px solid;white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-fixed-width{overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-fixed-width:hover{overflow:visible}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-label.first{border-left:none;border-right:none}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-label.reverse{border-left:none;border-right:1px solid}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-slabel{padding:0 0.15em;vertical-align:top;text-align:center;border-left:1px solid;white-space:nowrap}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-slabel:hover{overflow:visible}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-slabel.last{border-left:none;border-right:none}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-slabel.reverse{border-left:none;border-right:1px solid}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-bar{vertical-align:middle;text-align:left;padding:0 0.5em;position:relative}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-bar.reverse{text-align:right;position:relative}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-leaf{border:0;padding:0;text-align:left}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-leafR{border:0;padding:0;text-align:right}.mw-parser-output table.clade td.clade-leaf.reverse{text-align:right}.mw-parser-output table.clade:hover span.linkA{background-color:yellow}.mw-parser-output table.clade:hover span.linkB{background-color:green}.