mastodon | extinct mammal | Britannica.com extinct mammal ungulate Mastodon, any of several extinct elephantine mammals (family Mastodontidae, genus Mastodon [also called Mammut]) that first appeared in the early Miocene and continued in various forms through the Pleistocene Epoch (from 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago). In North America , mastodons probably persisted into post-Pleistocene time and were thus contemporaneous with historic North American Indian groups. Mastodons had a worldwide distribution; their remains are quite common and are often very well preserved. Mastodons and woolly mammoths were hunted by some Paleo-Indians. These animals were similar in size … Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. A characteristic feature of the mastodons, which appear to have fed upon leaves, is the distinctive nature of the grinding teeth, which in many respects are relatively primitive. They are low-crowned, large, and strongly rooted, with as many as four prominent ridges separated by deep troughs; the teeth are much smaller and less complex, however, than those in the true elephants.

The prominent upper tusks were long and grew parallel to each other with an upward curvature. Short lower tusks were present in males but absent in females. Mastodons were shorter than modern elephants but were heavily built. Although the skull was lower and flatter and of generally simpler construction than that of the modern elephants, it was similar in appearance. The ears were smaller and not as prominent as those of elephants. The body was relatively long, and the legs were short, massive, and pillarlike. Mastodons were covered with long, reddish brown hair. The reasons for their extinction are not certain, but, in North America at least, human hunting may have played a role. Learn More in these related articles: Mastodons Mastodons The American mastodon (scientific name Mammut americanum) roamed North America from at least 3.75 million to 11,000 years ago. Mastodons, along with mammoths and modern elephants, are members of the order Proboscidea.

As adults they stood between 2.5 and 3 meters (8-10 feet) at the shoulder and weighed betweeen 3500 and 5400 kilograms (4-6 tons). Mastodons became extinct approximately 11,000 years ago. Today, paleontologists are trying to understand why . Mastodon Bones Their teeth had blunt cones. Mastodons probably used these teeth, as well as their tusks, to browse on herbs, shrubs, and trees. This drawing shows a side view and a top view of a typical upper third molar of an American mastodon. A mounted skeleton of a mastodon is on display in the Changes exhibit at the Illinois State Museum in Springfield, Illinois. The skeleton is a composite of several mastodon skeletons found during excavations at Boney Springs in central Missouri. These excavations took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s and were directed by staff from the Illinois State Museum. To see photographs of this excavations, go to our Gallery . In the picture to the right, Marion Hoffman, Jim McGregor, and Dorothy Langer are working on the nearly completed mastodon mount for the museum.

The picture was taken in the fall of 1974 shortly before the mount went on exhibit. The mount has an internal armature; this means that none of the supporting structure can be seen when viewing the mastodon. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, this scene again became a familiar one at the Illinois State Museum. This is because teams of scientists and artists under the direction of Dr. Russell W. Graham produced and assembled mastodon skeleton casts for other museums. This picture shows the mastodon skelton mount produced for the museum at Mastodon State Historic Site (Jefferson County, Missouri) by the Illinois State Museum. It is composed of polyester resin and fiberglass and is supported by an internal steel frame. The ISM has produced custom mastodon mounts for the following institutions: Pink Palace Museum (Memphis, Tennessee) Dayton Museum of Natural History (Dayton, Ohio) Museum of Arts and Sciences (Rochester, New York) Houston Museum of Natural Sciences (Houston, Texas) Grand Rapids Public Museum (Grand Rapids, Michigan) Canadian Museum of Nature (Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) Mastodon Finds in the Midwestern U.S.

Mastodons are a common type of fossil in the midwestern U.S.. This map shows some of the sites at which the American mastodon has been found in the midwestern United States. The sites on this map are all relatively well-dated and well-studied. These sites contain mastodon remains that are between 40,000 and 11,000 years old. Clovis Point This is an excellent example of a Clovis projectile point. It was found at the Kimmswick Site, Jefferson County, Missouri. The point was found associated with the bones of American mastodons by a crew under the directorship of former ISM Curator of Geology Dr. Russell W. Graham. Mammoth or Mastodon: What's the Difference? Mammoth or Mastodon: What's the Difference? By Elizabeth Palermo, Associate Editor | February 27, 2013 04:28pm ET MORE These woolly mammoths were not closely related to mastodons. Credit: Mauricio Anton Mammoths and mastodons may have once roamed the Earth together, but they represent two distinct species of the Proboscidean family.

And while these extinct giants have a lot in common, they also exhibit some interesting differences. Mammoths, belonging to the genus Mammuthus, arose about 5.1 million years ago in Africa, according to Ross MacPhee, Ph.D., curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. From Africa, the mammoths migrated throughout Eurasia and North America. Their evolution continued over millions of years, eventually producing the woolly mammoth, M. primigenius, beginning roughly 250,000 years ago. Mammoths went extinct about 10,000 years ago, though scientists believe an isolated population of dwarf mammoths persisted on Wrangel Island off the northeastern coast of Siberia until about 3,700 years ago. Mammoths and modern elephants are closely related members of the same family (Elephantidae). And though they might resemble their distant, mammoth cousins, mastodons came into existence even earlier, about 27 million to 30 million years ago. They lived primarily in North and Central America and, like mammoths, began to disappear between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago.

Some scientists believe early humans may have hunted both species to extinction , though there is considerable evidence that several factors, including climate change and variations in habitat, contributed to the disappearance of mammoths and mastodons . While similar in size and stature, fossil evidence shows that mastodons were slightly smaller than mammoths, with shorter legs and lower, flatter heads. Both species stood between 7 and 14 feet (2 meters to 4 meters) tall, and were covered in long, shaggy hair that protected them from the harsh conditions of their respective environments. But mammoths also possessed fatty humps on their backs that provided them with the additional nutrients necessary in their more northerly, ice-covered habitats. The most important difference between these two species, according to Smithsonian.com , lies in how they ate their food. Both animals were herbivores, but mastodons had cone-shaped cusps on their molars designed to crush leaves, twigs and branches. Mammoths, however, had ridged molars that allowed them to cut through vegetation and graze like modern-day elephants. Both species had long, curved trunks that the animals may have used to scrape snow and ice off vegetation.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience . We're also on Facebook & Google+ . Editor's Recommendations Untitled Document MASTODONS AND OTHER FOSSIL ELEPHANTS Elephants, like humans, originated in Africa. Like humans, they migrated throughout Africa and subsequently into Europe and Asia. Although modern elephants are represented only by three endangered species, their fossil relatives were once much more diverse and widespread. Throughout the Cenozoic Era (the "Age of Mammals" which consists of earth's last 65 million years), elephants produced a large variety of forms ranging from species three feet tall at the shoulder to others much larger than modern elephants. The lateral incisor teeth which were modified to form tusks varied to include straight tusks, enormous curved tusks, curved tusks from the lower jaw, and tusks from both the upper and lower jaws. Primitive forms were smaller and displayed various stages of enlarging their lateral incisors to form the tusks of later forms. For example, the Late Eocene genus Moertherium was about the size of a large pig. Mastodons were among the browsing elephants which composed the first elephant migration out of Africa.

Other related forms included the straight-tusked gomphotheres, such as that depicted below. Mastodons weighed 5-6 tons, about the same as modern elephants. They traveled in herds and their skin was coated with thick fur. While mastodons ranged over much of North America, they were most common along the eastern region and seemed to prefer wetland habitats. The cusp-like teeth of the mastodon were adapted for browsing leaves, as were the ancestral elephant teeth. In contrast, mammoths and modern elephants possess ridged teeth which are adapted for grazing on grasses. Georges Cuvier, who is considered the founder of comparative anatomy, identified mastodon fossils from Ohio with the name "Mastodon" (which means "breast tooth") after the raised portions of these browsing teeth which make them so distinct from the teeth of mammoths. Because the difference between mammoths and mastodons was not originally appreciated, the scientific name for the American mastodon is Mammut americanus. Mammoths and modern elephants evolved in Africa long after the mastodon migration. Mammoths can easily be distinguished from mastodons because their long forelegs make them much taller at the shoulder.

Mammoths also possess more highly domed skulls, enormous curved tusks, and grooved teeth adapted for grazing. Mammoths are depicted in the following photos. During the series of Ice Ages which occurred over the past 1.5 million years, two North American ice sheets formed: one originating in the Northwest Rocky Mountains and another originating around the Hudson Bay. When the glaciations reached their greatest extent, these two ice sheets joined and formed an ice area of 6 million square miles-an area greater than the ice of Antarctica and possibly representing the largest ice sheet to ever form in earth's history. Because so much water was locked up in ice sheets, sea level dropped an estimated 300 feet. As a result, many regions which are currently covered by ocean were exposed such as an ice-free Bering Land Bridge which connected Alaska and Siberia. Mastodons (and many other species) migrated into North America and some eventually reached South America as well. The last of the glaciations began about 100,000 years ago and ended only about 10,000 years ago.

The last mastodons are thought to have gone extinct between 9,000 and 12,000 years ago, probably because of the dramatic climate change associated with the end of an Ice Age and because of hunting from early Americans which had arrived in the New World prior to 10,000 years ago. A number of sites, primarily in the Southwest, indicate that paleo-indians hunted these giant herbivores (Kurten, 1988). Fossils in general, and elephant fossils specifically, have played a role in determining how humans viewed the natural world around them. In the past, some mammoth tusks were depicted as originating from unicorn-like animals. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, descriptions of Russian mammoths identified mammoth remains as the "behemoth" mentioned in the Book of Job. It is thought that "mammoth" is actually derived from the word "behemoth". Elephant teeth were often found around Mediterranean during ancient times and were often interpreted as belonging to giants.

Many linked them to the accounts of giants in the book of Genesis, humans which died in the Noachian Flood, or to the giant bones of specific saints (such as St. Christopher or St. Vincent) (Cohen, 2002; Carrington, Wendt, Semonin). A 16th century debate over whether or not to give a Christian burial to mammoth bones in Switzerland was resolved with the argument that the giant "human" would have been a heathen (Lister, 1994). The first mastodon remains were found in North America in 1705 and were described by the puritan philosopher Cotton Mather in 1712. Cotton Mather identified them as giant humans who drowned in the Noachian Flood. The notion of giants in North America helped to bolster American pride since it refuted European claims that the natural state of the New World represented only a degenerate condition of that which existed in the Old World. It is thought that the first correct identification of extinct elephant bones was made by early 18th century African slaves living in California (Kurten, 1988). Several of America's founding fathers were interested in fossils.

The first mastodon remains of Orange County were found in 1780 which George Washington viewed while encamped in Newburgh. George Washington obtained a mastodon tooth. Benjamin Franklin's analysis of mastodon teeth demonstrated their adaptation for plant material and thus contradicted popular tales of fierce, carnivorous mastodons. Thomas Jefferson had taken an interest in fossils and was the first to describe the ground sloth named after him, the Jefferson sloth Megalonyx jeffersoni (Kurten, 1988). We now know that mastodons, like so many other animals of the fossil record, are extinct. The idea of extinction was repulsive to many scholars of the past. It wasn't until the late 1700s to early 1800s that it became generally accepted that extinction was even possible. Thomas Jefferson was a proponent of the organization of life into a "Great Chain of Being" in which no link in the chain could ever become extinct without threatening the entire system. Jefferson warned Lewis and Clark that they might encounter living mastodons as they set off to explore the Louisiana Territory.

In May 1972, a mastodon skeleton was found near the town of Sugar Loaf, Orange County by Frank Pickul who was excavating a drainage ditch in a black dirt farm near the border of Warwick and Chester. The excavating machine stalled when it struck the head of the mastodon. The owners of the property, the Sorbello family, donated the specimen to the Incorporated Orange County Chapter of the New York State Archaeological Association (OCCNYSAA) who completed the excavation. The skeleton was of an adult male which once stood 20 feet long and just over 8 feet tall. He walked through Orange County almost ten thousand years ago (the carbon indicated a date of 9860 years plus/minus 225 years, about the time when the last mastodons are thought to have become extinct). Humans were known to have inhabited this area by this time (because of a site at Dutchess Quarry Cave dated at 12,580 years ago) but there is no evidence that this animal had been killed by humans. Its remains were preserved at the bottom of a glacial lake where it either drowned or into which it fell upon its death from other causes.

All of the original bones were found with the exception of a scapula and humerus. The specimen was named Sugar and erected in 1976 in the Biotech Building of Orange County Community College. The original tusks were damaged and are on display in a case next to Sugar. Hollow casts of the tusks were made for the mounted specimen. Sugar is unusual in that he possessed short tusks protruding from the lower jaw which are more typically associated with the adults of Asiatic mastodons and young male American mastodons. Beginning in 2002, the Agassiz Society led ongoing efforts to raise money for Sugar's restoration. Thirty-eight mastodon specimens have been discovered in Orange County. Mastodon specimens from Orange County have been sent to Germany, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City (including the Warren mastodon), Albany (in the NY State Museum), and London (the latter of which was moved to Philadelphia and later destroyed in a fire). Remains of more than 100 mastodons and 15 mammoths have been found in the state of New York (although none of the mammoths have been found in Orange County; the Hudson River apparently represented a barrier for them).

Mastodons are not only a beautiful relic of Orange County's past, their remains testify that once-dominant species can suffer a decline in numbers and even become extinct. Apparently, mastodons were unable to survive in a world whose challenges included drastic climate change and unsustainable exploitation by humans. We are currently living in a period of extinction which is estimated to be as severe as that which ended the reign of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It is estimated that about 100 species become extinct each day, although virtually all of these species would be unfamiliar to you since they are rare to begin with, live in distant habitats such as the tropical rainforests of Latin America, and are much more likely to be invertebrates or plants than birds or mammals. Extinct species that have inhabited New York in the past several centuries include the Passenger Pigeon, Eastern Bison, sea mink, heath hen, Townsends Finch, and the Eastern Wapiti. Other species have become extinct from other regions of the U.S. including the badlands bighorn sheep, Oregon bison, Carolina parakeet, Florida wolf, and long-eared kit fox.

Many species on the current Endangered Species List are likely to become extinct if they have not already done so. Without a dedicated effort to preserve biodiversity, countless modern species will have no place in earth's future other than to have their remains adorn hallways and fill museum shelves. While Sugar bears witness to extinctions of the past, he also reminds us that our actions will determine the extent of the extinctions of our times. General Information | Missouri State Parks Missouri State Parks Megamenu content: Make a Reservation Camping Megamenu content: Things to Do column 1 I want to... Megamenu content: Things to Do column 2 Upcoming Events Cool Parks gear for sale. Get ready for your trip to one of Missouri's State Parks. Stay at Mastodon State Historic Site The Kimmswick Bone Bed Mastodon State Historic Site contains an important archaeological and paleontological site - the Kimmswick Bone Bed, where scientists discovered the first solid evidence of the coexistence of humans and the American mastodon in eastern North America. At the end of the ice age that occurred from 35,000 to 10,000 years ago, the glaciers to the north were slowly melting as the earth warmed.

Animals such as giant ground sloths, peccaries, and hairy, elephantlike mastodons roamed the Midwest. Paleontologists theorize that the area was once swampy and contained mineral springs. Animals that came to the springs may have become trapped in the mud, which helped preserve their bones. Early American Indians also had reached present-day Missouri by at least 12,000 years ago. For a brief period at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, the lives of humans and mastodons intertwined. The first recorded report of bones of mastodons and other now-extinct animals in the vicinity of the town of Kimmswick was in the early 1800s. Private entrepreneur and St. Louis Museum owner, Albert C. Koch, Ph.D., investigated a report of bones weathering out of the banks along Rock Creek and conducted excavations in 1839. Thinking he had discovered a new animal, he named his find the Missouri Leviathan and exhibited it in the United States and Europe. Richard Owen, a comparative anatomist at the British Museum in London, convinced Koch the skeleton was nothing more than an American mastodon.

At the turn of the century, nationwide interest in the site was revived when amateur St. Louis paleontologist C. W. Beehler excavated several skulls, jaws, teeth, tusks and other fossils. Railroad tours from St. Louis brought many lay and professional visitors, particularly during the 1904 World's Fair, to visit Beehler's wood shack museum near the bone bed. Beehler's excavations were not well documented so the recovery of stone artifacts in the deposits was not initially accepted as showing the presence of humans during the Pleistocene. From 1940-1942, excavations by archaeologist Robert McCormick Adams from the St. Louis Academy of Science were sponsored by the Works Progress Administration. He recovered additional fossils but few artifacts. Other private excavations were made subsequent to his work. Unfortunately, many bones and tusks were given away, sold, taken by relic hunters or destroyed by later limestone-quarrying operations. Public interest in the site was revived in the 1970s during construction of Interstate 55. A movement to save the site from future destruction was organized by the Mastodon Park Committee.

Through the efforts of the committee, local legislators, private individuals, corporations and local school children, and with the help of a federal grant, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources was able to purchase the 418 acres containing the bone bed in 1976. The department sponsored excavations of the bone bed in 1979, 1980, and 1984. In 1979, paleontologist Russell W. Graham of the Illinois State Museum provided the first solid evidence of the coexistence of humans and mastodons, as a stone "Clovis" type projectile point was found in association with mastodon bones. This was the first site in eastern North America where this association was conclusively demonstrated. The Kimmswick Bone Bed is important in the history of archaeological discovery, as well as a rare example of a stratified ice age Paleo-Indian Clovis culture hunting activity, and one of the oldest known archaeological sites in Missouri (over 10,000 years old). Presently the Clovis culture is the earliest well-documented Native American occupation for North America. Clovis hunters may have contributed to the extinction of many Pleistocene animals.

Due to its archaeological and paleontological significance, the Kimmswick Bone Bed was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 14, 1987. Visitors may take the Wildflower Trail that begins next to the museum and leads to the site where the bones and artifacts were found. Until future excavations are sponsored by the Department of Natural Resources, the remnants of the bone bed site remain safely buried for generations to come. Mastodon - Prehistoric Animals MASTODON Oil painting : 18" x 21" MASTODON americanus This unusual large mammal lived in North America during the Pleistocene epoch until the end of the ice age. It roamed the earth for over a million years, but suddenly disappeared (perhaps because of the climate changes). It was one of the largest land animals living during the ice age. Mastodon belonged to the family Mammutidae, that originated in North Africa, spreading to Eurasia and entering North America 15 million years ago. Its name means "nipple tooth". These elephant-like animals were affected by environmental changes. Mastodons living during the middle of the last glaciation were small, whereas those living later in forests were larger.

It was mostly adapted to conifer forests and marsh. It fed on plants (conifer twigs, swamp plants, larch, spruce, pine, grass, mosses, etc.) and used its tusks to break branches. Mastodon had rather short, straight tusks and sharp cheek teeth. Females were smaller, their tusks were lighter and smaller than those of males. They had coats of fine underwool, overlain by abundant hair (2-7 inches in length). Fossils of mastodons are commonly found all over the North America and Canada. Mastodon americanus was first recognized in 1799 by well-known French anatomist Baron Cuvier. RANGE: North America, Canada SIZE: about 4.5 m long body, 2-3 m in shoulder height TIME - Pleistocene American Mastodon - Mammut americanum - Details - Encyclopedia of Life Learn more about this article Mastodons are part of the order Proboscidea, which also includes mammoths and other elephants. Species in this order can be immense in size, and the larger species have massive column-like limbs, a long and flexible trunk, and well-developed tusks.

Mastodons lived from the early Miocene to the Holocene (about 23 million to ~ 10,000 years ago). Mastodons preferred to live in spruce woodlands and forests but were also found to live in valleys, lowlands, and swamps. Mammut americanum was an herbivore, which means it only ate plants. Mammut americanum mostly ate coniferous trees. They would eat twigs, cones, leaves, and pine needles. Between 9,000 and 12,000 years ago mastodons went extinct. The term Mammut comes from European farmers from the Middle Ages and means “earth burrower”. The farmers found the massive bones in their fields and thought they belonged to monstrous burrowing beasts. © Sanzenbacher, Beth Learn more about this article Mastodons were found throughout Africa, Asia and Europe from the Oligocene to the early Pleistocene (about 27 million to 1.8 million years ago). They were also found in North America from the middle Miocene to the early Holocene (about 13 million to ~10,000 years ago).

Mammut americanum was a dominant and widespread animal in North America during the Pleistocene (about 1.8 million to ~10,000 years ago). They ranged from Alaska to Florida and were most abundant in eastern forests. In fact, many Mammut americanum teeth were found in Northeastern conifer-forests that were 300km from the present shoreline. During the last 25,000 years many Mammut americanum lived on conifer-covered land that is now below the sea. © Sanzenbacher, Beth Learn more about this article Mastodons are part of the order Proboscidea, which also includes mammoths and other elephants. Species in this order can be immense in size, and the larger species have massive column-like limbs, a long and flexible trunk, and well-developed tusks. The molars of Mammut americanum were very different from the molars of modern elephants. Mammut americanum molars had pairs of cone-like ridges with open valleys that looked like miniature mountain ranges. Mammut americanum had six molars on each half of their jaw.

Worn molars would fall out at the front of the jaw, and new molars would form in the back and move forward to replace worn teeth. They often had more than one tooth in each half-jaw at a time. These teeth were used to grind vegetation, like a mortar-and-pestle. The skull of Mammut americanum was longer than a mammoth’s skull. Its skull was carried horizontally, had a flattened forehead, and a long rounded lower jawbone, sometimes with a pair of short lower tusks. Both males and females had tusks in their upper jaws, but males had larger and heavier tusks. Young males would also have small under-developed lower tusks, but they usually lost these tusks with maturity. The upper tusks extended 2 to 3 meters below the nasal bones, and were horizontal to the skull. The tusks were modified incisors. A cross-section of a tusk showed that it grew in a cone pattern (like a stack of ice cream cones) and traces of annual growth rings were also found. Usually one tusk would be shorter than the other, meaning that a mastodon would use one tusk more than the other.

Since mastodons are early cousins of modern elephants, their body shapes and sizes are similar. However mastodons had deeper chests, broader hips, shorter legs, and a longer back than modern elephants. They were covered in coarse brownish hair about 2.75m long, and they probably did not have a wooly undercoat. © Sanzenbacher, Beth Learn more about this article Between 9,000 and 12,000 years ago mastodons went extinct. Approximately 10,000 years ago the globe started to warm up, the last ice age ended, and mastodons lost many of their habitats and sources of food. However, many scientists think that the climate shift was not enough to cause the extinction of mastodons. 10,000 years ago, humans were found in most areas of the globe and hunted mastodons. It is thought that increased hunting pressure from humans combined with the change in climate caused the extinction of mastodons. However, scientists are still debating and researching this theory.

© Sanzenbacher, Beth Learn more about this article Since Mammut americanum is a distant cousin to modern elephants it is difficult to know what their behavior was like. Elephants are highly social animals, and there is some evidence that mastodons were also social. Male mastodons had larger bodies and tusks than females. It is thought that the larger size of the males helped them to compete for females. Mastodons took about 10 years to fully mature so a logical guess would be that mastodons took care of their young much like modern elephants do. Many mastodon findings are of single individuals which suggests that mastodons did not live in herds like modern elephants or it could be evidence of male mastodons traveling without the herd like modern elephants do. Scientists are debating and researching the complex issue of mastodon behavior. © Sanzenbacher, Beth Learn more about this article Mammut americanum belongs to the Mammutidae family and there are about 15 different species of mastodon. Mastodons are a much older taxon than mammoths or elephants. Mastodons share a common ancestor with mammoths and elephants but evolved millions of years before mammoths and elephants.

For example, the earliest mastodon is at least 27 million years old; the oldest known elephants are likely not older than 9 million years; the oldest mammoth is from Africa and dates to about 6-5 million years. As mastodons evolved they became much larger (from rhino-sized to elephant-sized) and their teeth became broader. © Sanzenbacher, Beth Mammoths and Mastodons: All American Monsters | Science | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use Mammoths and Mastodons: All American Monsters A mammoth discovery in 1705 sparked a fossil craze and gave the young United States a symbol of national might Columbian mammoths were larger than mastodons. Both once roamed North America. (Velizar Simeonovski / The Field Museum, Chicago) Smithsonian Magazine | Subscribe April 2010 In the blue shadows after dawn, the low hills in this stretch of South Dakota can look like a line of elephants trudging toward some distant water hole. It’s a geologic echo of the great herds of Col­umbian mammoths that used to wander here. They were like African elephants, only bigger. “A full-grown adult weighed ten tons.

That’s as much as a school bus,” a guide tells the tourists on a sidewalk at the Mammoth Site, a paleontological dig and museum in the town of Hot Springs. She points out a set of brick-size teeth with corrugated surfaces like the soles of running shoes. With them, a mammoth ate 400 pounds of grasses and sedges a day. From This Story Columbian mammoths were larger than mastodons. (Velizar Simeonovski / The Field Museum, Chicago) Both Columbian mammoths and mastodons once roamed North America. (Velizar Simeonovski / The Field Museum, Chicago) The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota, preserves the fossilized remains of Columbian mammoths at the place where warm waters and foliage lured them to their deaths 26,000 years ago. (Blake Gordon / Aurora Select) Paleontologist Larry Agenbroad discovered the mammoth site 35 years ago. (Mammoth Site of Hot Springs, SD) Volunteer Ruth Clemmer exposes a bone, part of an effort to add to the 58 specimens that have been brought to light.

(Blake Gordon / Aurora Select) Altogether, parts of 58 mammoths lie exposed in an area about the size of a hockey rink, sheltered beneath a roof built to protect them. Agenbroad figures at least as many remain hidden underground. (Blake Gordon / Aurora Select) Colombian mammoths predominated in the open grasslands of the West, mastodons in the forests of the East. The map shows sites where the two animals' fossilized remains have been found. (Guilbert Gates) The French anatomist Georges Cuvier coined "mastodon" from the Greek words for "breast" and "tooth." (Bettmann / Corbis) The conical ridges on the tooth in question were for grinding branches—not flesh, as had been believed. (Thomas Jefferson Fossil Collection / Academy of Natural Sciences) The mammoth's tooth was better than the mastodon's for eating grasses. (Albert Copley / Visuals Unlimited) The idea of an "animal of uncommon magnitude" led the artist Charles Willson Peale to lead a dig in the Hudson River Valley—and to paint the proceedings.

(The Granger Collection, New York) Peale added a few mastodon bones to a pile previously found at the site, but when he showed the skeleton at his Philadelphia museum, he mistakenly pointed the tusks downward. (© Mary Evans Picture Library) A 13-foot-tall mammoth skeleton lives at the University of Nebraska. (Peter Menzel / Photo Researchers) France's Comte de Buffon and Thomas Jefferson argued over which continent's wildlife was bigger. (North Wind Picture Archives) The 15-foot-tall giant short-faced bear America figured into the argument over which continent had the larger wildlife. (Joe Venus / By the 1780s, Jefferson convinced himself that the mammoth still lived. When, as president, he sent Lewis and Clark to explore the American West–it was partly to see if they could turn up a living mammoth. (The Granger Collection, New York) A trapped mammoth struggles to exit a pit. (Mark Hallett Paleoart / Photo Researchers) Photo Gallery Directly below the sidewalk, a volunteer scratches up dirt in a niche formed largely by the bones of dead mammoths.

She’s got a big shoulder blade sticking up out of the ground off her knees, the round end of a leg bone at her right elbow, ribs like stripes painted in the dirt wall just above, and behind her a sort of cascade of half-excavated skulls and tusks spilling down to the bottom of the dig. Altogether, parts of 58 mammoths lie exposed in an area about the size of a hockey rink, sheltered beneath a roof built to protect them. Larry Agenbroad, the paleontologist who helped discover this site 35 years ago, figures at least as many remain hidden underground. This is one of the world’s largest sites that display the bones where mammoths died, and it has some of the horror and fascination of a slow-motion traffic pileup. About 26,000 years ago, Agenbroad says, a sinkhole formed here and filled with water from a hot spring, creating a vegetated oasis that lured many young mammoths to their death.

In places, the bones have settled in the posture of the animal’s desperate struggle to get back up the slick, steep sides of the pond, a foreleg flung up, the back legs splayed out where they pawed for traction in the mud below. Occasionally a visitor will imagine the fear and trumpeting of the struggling animal and start to weep. The guides, volunteers and paleontologists at the Mammoth Site are a bit more jaded. They’ve nicknamed one disarticulated skeleton Napoleon Bone-Apart. Another specimen, found minus its skull, started out as Marie Antoinette, after the guillotined French queen. It turned out to be a male, like all the other mammoths in this site. “So we renamed it Murray,” says Agenbroad, a soft-spoken, neighborly figure with bright, deep-set eyes behind rimless glasses. It’s a venerable American tradition, this mix of science, show business and big hairy pachyderms. The same happy combination drives a new exhibition, “Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age,” which just opened at Chicago’s Field Museum (and travels to Jersey City, Anchorage, St.

Louis, Boston, Denver and San Diego). With Agenbroad as a consultant, one part of the exhibition aims to evoke the world of the mammoths in the South Dakota hills. Other parts explore the profound influence these creatures had in human history. Though dinosaurs now come to mind when we think about lost worlds, mammoths and mastodons provided the first persuasive evidence that one of God’s creatures could go extinct. (The idea had previously bordered on heresy, but we now know that the animals vanished mysteriously roughly 11,000 years ago.) And though we often associate them with Siberia, mammoths and mastodons played a huge role in establishing our national identity, as Americans struggled to climb out from under the shadow of Europe. It started with a five-pound tooth. In the summer of 1705, in the Hudson River Valley village of Claverack, New York, a tooth the size of a man’s fist surfaced on a steep bluff, rolled downhill and landed at the feet of a Dutch tenant farmer, who promptly traded it to a local politician for a glass of rum. The politician made the tooth a gift to Lord Cornbury, then the eccentric governor of New York.

(Cornbury liked to cross-dress as his cousin Queen Anne, or so his enemies said.) Cornbury sent the tooth to London labeled “tooth of a Giant,” after the statement in Genesis that “there were giants in the earth” in the days before the Flood. Man or beast, this “monstrous creature,” as Cornbury called it, would soon become celebrated as the “incognitum,” the unknown species. The discovery of dinosaurs was more than a century in the future, but in terms of this creature’s grip on the popular imagination, it was “the dinosaur of the early American republic,” according to Paul Semonin, author of American Monster , a history of the incognitum.

Some primal force in the American spirit embraced it, he says, as “in effect, the nation’s first prehistoric monster.” Based on the size of bones discovered near the tooth, the Massachusetts poet Edward Taylor estimated the incognitum’s height at 60 or 70 feet (10 would have been closer to the mark) and wrote bad poetry about “Ribbs like Rafters” and arms “like limbs of trees.” The minister Cotton Mather boasted that the New World possessed biblical giants to make the Old World’s “Og and GOLIATH, and all the Sons of Anak” look like pygmies. When similar teeth later turned up in South Carolina, slaves pointed out that they looked a lot like an African elephant’s. Early explorers also brought back whole tusks and bones from the Ohio River Valley. Americans soon started referring to the incognitum as a “mammoth,” after the woolly mammoths then being dug out of the ice in Siberia.

It fact, it would turn out that North America had been home primarily to two different types of pachyderm—mammoths, like the ones at the dig in South Dakota, and mastodons, like the ones in the Hudson River Valley. Hardly anybody knew the difference. Single Page Previous Page 1 of 5 Next 1 2 3 4 5 Like this article? Mastodons were hunted in North America 800 years earlier than thought | Science | The Guardian Mastodons were hunted in North America 800 years earlier than thought Humans were killing large mammals in North America long before 'Clovis culture', study of mastodon remains suggests A mastodon rib with an embedded bone spear tip: (a) Closeup view; (b) reconstruction showing the bone point with the broken tip (the thin layer represents the exterior of the rib); (c) CT scan; (d) the entire rib fragment.

Photograph: University of Copenhagen/PA Thursday 20 October 2011 14.15 EDT First published on Thursday 20 October 2011 14.15 EDT Close This article is 5 years old Humans were hunting large mammals in North America about 800 years earlier than previously thought, new analysis of a controversial mastodon specimen – with what appears to be a spear tip in its rib – seems to confirm. The find suggests humans were hunting mastodons using tools made from bone about a thousand years before the start of the " Clovis culture ", reputedly the first human culture in North America. Other evidence points to mammoth hunting using stone tools around this time, but the notion of pre-Clovis hunting has remained highly controversial. The mastodon was found in 1977 by a farmer called Emanuel Manis. He contacted archaeologist Carl Gustafson, who excavated the skeleton and noticed a pointed object embedded in its rib . Gustafson took a fuzzy x-ray and interpreted the object as a projectile point made of bone or antler. By dating organic matter around the fossil, he estimated that it was about 14,000 years old.

Other archaeologists challenged Gustafson's dates and his interpretation of the fragment as a man-made point. Decades later Professor Michael Waters from Texas A&M University contacted him about re-examining the specimen using modern technology. His analysis was published on Thursday in the journal Science. Waters placed the mastodon in an industrial-grade CT scanner at the University of Texas. "It's more powerful than a hospital one. They're taking slices every 0.06mm, half the thickness of a piece of paper," he says. "The 3D rendering clearly showed that the object was sharpened to a tip. It was clearly the end of a bone projectile point." Waters analysed collagen protein from the mastodon's rib and tusks to confirm that the animal died about 13,800 years ago, almost exactly as Gustafson predicted. He also extracted DNA from the rib and the spear point. Analysis showed that both belonged to a mastodon, suggesting the animal had been killed with a weapon fashioned from the remains of its own kind. "It should certainly be considered as evidence of hunting. You're bending over backwards to explain it as something else," said Prof Daniel Fisher from the University of Michigan .

Two other sites in Wisconsin appear to show people were hunting woolly mammoths and using stone tools between 14,200 and 14,800 years ago. The Manis specimen suggests they also hunted mastodons and used bone tools. Together, the three sites provide strong evidence for pre-Clovis hunting. "They're incontrovertible," said Waters. "Clearly, people were hunting mammoths and mastodons again and again, playing a part in their ultimate demise." He believes the beasts probably succumbed to gradual hunting pressure from humans, rather than a quick "Clovis blitzkrieg". Despite Waters's efforts, the fragment in the Manis mastodon's rib is still stoking debate. "It's not definitely proven that it is a projectile point," said Prof Gary Haynes from the University of Nevada, Reno . "Elephants today push each other all the time and break each other's ribs so it could be a bone splinter that the animal just rolled on." Waters does not credit this alternative hypothesis. "Ludicrous what-if stories are being made up to explain something people don't want to believe," he said.

"We took the specimen to a bone pathologist, showed him the CT scans, and asked if there was any way it could be an internal injury. He said absolutely not." Waters added: "If you break a bone, a splinter isn't going to magically rotate its way through a muscle and inject itself into your rib bone. Something needed to come at this thing with a lot of force to get it into the rib." The spear thrower must have had a powerful arm, because the fragment would have punctured hair, skin and up to 30cm of mastodon muscle. "A bone projectile point is a really lethal weapon," said Waters. "It's sharpened to a needle point and little greater than the diameter of a pencil. It's like a bullet. It's designed to get deep into the elephant and hit a vital organ … I've seen these thrown through old cars." What would it take to finally convince the sceptics? "I'm not going to dig my heels in and stonewall it," said Haynes. "If they yanked it out and showed that there are scraping marks and it's been polished and shaped, that would convince me." Waters said he would not tamper with such an extraordinary specimen. "That would destroy it.

I would be a pariah. It's unnecessary with modern technology. I could take 3D printers and recreate the object itself."

Question: A mastodon was an early form of what animal?
Answer: Elephant