Mastodon
This article is about the prehistoric elephant-like animal. For other uses of the word see Mastodon (disambiguation)image = Masthodon angustidens.jpg | image_width = 250px | image_caption = Mastodon skeleton | regnum = Animalia | phylum = Chordata | classis = Mammalia | ordo = Proboscidea | familia = Mammutidae | familia_authority = Hay, 1922 | genus = MammutMastodons or Mastodonts are members of an extinct genus Mammut of the order Proboscidea; they resembled, but were distinct from, the woolly mammoth. Unlike the woolly mammoth, they did not belong to the family Elephantidae.The American mastodon (Mammut americanum) lived in North America. Mastodons first appeared almost four million years ago and became extinct approximately 10,000 years ago. Though their habitat spanned a large territory, mastodons were most common in the Ice age spruce forests of the east, as well as in warmer lowland environments.[Björn Kurtén and Elaine Anderson, Pleistocene Mammals of North America, (New York: Columbia UP, 1980), p. 344.] Their remains have been found as far as 300 kilometers offshore in the Northeast, in areas that were dry land during the low sea level stand of the last ice age.[Kurtén and Anderson, p. 344.]While mastodons were furry like woolly mammoths, and similar in height at roughly three meters at the shoulder, the resemblance was superficial. They differed from mammoths primarily in the blunt, conical shape of their teeth [1], which were more suited to chewing leaves than the high-crowned teeth mammoths used for grazing; the name mastodon (or mastodont) means mastoid teeth (Greek μαστός and οδούς "nipple tooth"), and is also an obsolete name for their genus. Their skulls were larger and flatter than those of mammoths, while their skeleton was stockier and more robust.[Kurtén and Anderson, p. 345] Mastodons seem to have lacked the undercoat characteristic of mammoths.[Kurtén and Anderson, p. 345.]
The tusks of the mastodon sometimes exceeded five meters in length, and were nearly horizontal, another contrast with more strongly curved mammoth tusks.[Kurtén and Anderson, p. 345.] Young males had vestigial lower tusks that were lost in adulthood.[Kurtén and Anderson, p. 345.] The tusks were probably used to break branches and twigs; one tusk is often shorter than the other, suggesting that, like humans, mastodons may have had laterality.[Kurtén and Anderson, p. 345.]
The meat of mastodons was a food source for early humans. Archaeologists are still trying to determine what role, if any, the early human settlers of North America played in the extinction of the mastodon.*http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/larson/mammut.html
*http://www.calvin.edu/academic/geology/mastodon/calvin_c.htm
*http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/expeditions/treasure_fossil/Treasures/Warren_Mastodon/warren.html?acts
*http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/wildfacts/factfiles/3004.shtml
*http://www.priweb.org/mastodon/mastodon_home.html
*http://www.mostateparks.com/mastodon.htm
*http://www.slfp.com/Mastodon.htm
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