Mastodon
| Mastodon Temporal range: early Pliocene – late Pleistocene, 5.3–0.011 mya
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| Mounted mastodon skeleton, Museum of the Earth. | |
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| Family: | †Mammutidae Hay, 1922
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| Genus: | †Mammut Blumenbach, 1799
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Mastodons or Mastodonts are extinct elephant-like animals of the genus Mammut and the family Mammutidae. Mastodons became extinct about 11,000 years ago.
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
[change | change source]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
[change | change source]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]
References
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