People may imagine mammoths and mastodons as enormous beasts that roamed the vast North American continent more than 10,000 years ago. But the mammoths and mastodons of present-day southwestern Ohio and northwestern Kentucky were homebodies that tended to stay in one area, a new study finds. 
 
 The enamel on the animals' molars gave researchers clues as to where the mammoths and mastodons lived throughout their lives and what they ate. They discovered that mammoths ate grasses and sedges, whereas mastodons preferred leaves from trees or shrubs. Mammoths favored areas near retreating ice sheets, where grasses were plentiful, and mastodons fed near forested spaces, the researchers said. 
 
 "I suspect that this was a pretty nice place to live, relatively speaking," lead researcher Brooke Crowley, an assistant professor of geology and anthropology at the University of Cincinnati, said in a statement. "Our data suggest that animals probably had what they needed to survive here year-round." [Image Gallery: Stunning Mammoth Unearthed] 
 
 Both animals, now extinct, likely came to North America across the Bering Strait land bridge that connected Alaska to Russia when sea levels were lower than they are today, Crowley told Live Science in an email. 
 
 Mammoths — which had teeth ideal for grinding grasses, as well as curved tusks and humped heads — are more closely related to elephants than mastodons are, Crowley said. Mammoths came to North America during the mid-Pleistocene Epoch, about 1 million years ago, she added. 
 
 Mastodons arrived much earlier. They had spread across America by the Pliocene Epoch, around 5 million years ago. Their molars were shaped to crush plants, such as leaves and woody stems, and they had long, straight tusks that could grow up to 16 feet (4.9 meters) long, Crowley said. 
 
 In the study, the researchers looked at the remnants of carbon, oxygen and strontium, a naturally occurring metal, in the enamel of molars from eight mammoths and four mastodons that lived in Ohio and Kentucky about 20,000 years ago. 
 
 The carbon analysis helped researchers learn about the animals' diet, whereas the traces of oxygen told them about the general climate at the time. Strontium provides insights into how much the animal traveled as their molars developed. Researchers can look at the type of strontium within the enamel and determine where it came from by comparing it to local samples of strontium in the environment. 
 
 "Strontium reflects the bedrock geology of a location," Crowley said. This means that if a local animal has traces of strontium in its tooth, researchers can deduce where that type of strontium came from in the area. "If an animal grows its tooth in one place and then moves elsewhere, the strontium in its tooth is going to reflect where it came from, not where it died," she said. 
 
 Surprisingly, the researchers said, the strontium in the mammoth and mastodon teeth matched local water samples in 11 of the 12 mammals. Only one mastodon appeared to have traveled from another area before settling in the Ohio Valley. 
 
 The findings, however, only apply to the animals that lived in that region. "A mammoth in Florida did not behave the same as one in New York, Wyoming, California, Mexico or Ohio," Crowley said. 
 
 The study was published July 16 in the journal Boreas. 
 
 Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggeland Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| Mammoth and Mastodon Behavior Was Less Roam, More Stay at Home 
 
 UC research on mammoths and mastodons could benefit modern-day elephants. 
 
 Research led by UC's Brooke Crowley, posing with this mammoth mandible, has uncovered some interesting ideas about mammoth and mastodon behavior. 
 
 UC's Brooke Crowley uses isotopic analysis in her research. Here she works with samples of bones from extinct lemurs. 
 
 UC graduate Eric Baumann worked with Brooke Crowley researching mammoth and mastodon behavior. (Photo provided by Brooke Crowley) 
 
 Mammoths ate more grasses and sedges than mastodons, which favored leaves from trees or shrubs. 
 
 Strontium from all of the animals (except one mastodon) matched local water samples, meaning they likely were less mobile and migratory than previously thought. 
 
 Differences in strontium and carbon between mammoths and mastodons suggest they didn't inhabit the same localities. 
 
 Mammoths preferred to be closer to the retreating ice sheet where grasses were more abundant, whereas mastodons fed farther from the ice sheet in more forested habitat. 
 
 Photos By: Dottie Stover, UC Creative ServicesTheir scruffy beards weren't ironic, but there are reasons mammoths and mastodons could have been the hipsters of the Ice Age.According to research from the University of Cincinnati, the famously fuzzy relatives of elephants liked living in Greater Cincinnati long before it was trendy – at the end of the last ice age. A study led by Brooke Crowley, an assistant professor of geology and anthropology, shows the ancient proboscideans enjoyed the area so muchas previously thought.They even had their own preferred hangouts. Crowley's findings indicate each species kept to separate areas based on availability of favored foods here at the southern edge of the Last Glacial Maximum's major ice sheet."I suspect that this was a pretty nice place to live, relatively speaking," Crowley says. "Our data suggest that animals probably had what they needed to survive here year-round."Crowley's research with co-author and recent UC graduate Eric Baumann, "," was recently published in Boreas , an international academic research journal.Learning more about the different behaviors of these prehistoric creatures. Both types are on the World Wildlife Fund's endangered species list . Studying how variable different types of elephants might have been in the past, Crowley says, might help ongoing efforts to protect these largest of land mammals from continued threats such as poaching and habitat destruction."There are regionally different stories going on," Crowley says. "There's not one overarching theme that we can say about a mammoth or a mastodon. And that's becoming more obvious in studies people are doing in different places. A mammoth in Florida did not behave the same as one in New York, Wyoming, California, Mexico or Ohio."For their research, Crowley and Baumann looked to the wisdom in teeth – specifically museum specimens of molars from four mastodons and eight mammoths from Southwestern Ohio and Northwestern Kentucky.and analyzing the stable carbon, oxygen and strontium isotopic signatures in the powdered enamel.Each element tells a different story. Carbon provides insight into an animal's diet, oxygen relates to overall climatic conditions of an animal's environment and strontium indicates how much an animal may have traveled at the time its tooth was forming."Strontium reflects the bedrock geology of a location," Crowley says. "So if a local animal grows its tooth and mineralizes it locally and dies locally, the strontium isotope ratio in its tooth will reflect the place where it lived and died. If an animal grows its tooth in one place and then moves elsewhere, the strontium in its tooth is going to reflect where it came from, not where it died."Their analysis allowed them to determine several things:“As a geologist, questioning the past is one of the most interesting and exciting things to do,” says Baumann, an environmental geologist with a contractor for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Based on our data, mammoths and mastodons seemed to have different diets and lived in different areas during their lives. This is important because it allows us to understand how species in the past lived and interacted. And the past is the key to the present.”Crowley of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences plans further research into how strontium isotopes can be used to explore megafauna, including other projects dealing with mammoths and mastodons.
– Mr. Snuffleupagus and friends didn’t much like to leave home—at least not the ones that lived in what is now Ohio and Kentucky, a University of Cincinnati study reveals. Researchers had long believed mammoths and mastodons were nomadic, but their teeth tell a different story. Mammoths ate grasses and sedges near retreating ice sheets; and mastodons chomped on leaves and shrubs near the forest, Live Science explains. And those feeding grounds seem to be where they stayed year-round. Researcher Brooke Crowley analyzed the carbon, oxygen, and strontium in the enamel of 20,000-year-old molars for clues about diet, climate, and travels. "Strontium reflects the bedrock geology of a location," says Crowley. "If an animal grows its tooth in one place and then moves elsewhere, the strontium in its tooth is going to reflect where it came from, not where it died." Mammoths and mastodons living in southwestern Ohio and northwestern Kentucky didn’t stray far: For example, research revealed molars from all but one mastodon matched local water samples. Crowley says the findings may benefit endangered Asian and African elephants—their fuzzy counterparts are ancient cousins—since it "allows us to understand how species in the past lived and interacted. And the past is the key to the present." (Another elephant ancestor was hunted by ancient humans.)