American Mastodon

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Mastodon - www.britannica.com/animal/mastodon 
 
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. 
 

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. 
 
                                  

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American Mastodon by Petr Modlitba 
 
                

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www.thoughtco.com/facts-about-mastodons-1093330 - 10 Facts About Mastodons

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. Below you'll discover 10 fascinating facts about the Mastodon, the lesser-known half of this pachyderm pair:

1- The Name Mastodon Means "Nipple Tooth"
Okay, you can stop laughing now; "nipple" refers to the characteristic shape of the Mastodon's molar teeth, not its mammary glands. For the record, the Mastodon's official genus name is Mammut, which is so confusingly similar to Mammuthus (the genus name of the Woolly Mammoth) that "Mastodon" is the preferred usage of both scientists and the general public.
                              

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2- Mastodons, Like Mammoths, Were Covered with Fur.
The Woolly Mammoth gets all the press, but Mastodons (and particularly the most famous member of the breed, the North American Mastodon) also had thick coats of shaggy hair, to protect them from the intense cold of Pleistocene North America and Eurasia. It's possible that Ice Age humans found it easier to hunt (and strip the pelts off) Woolly Mammoths as opposed to Mastodons, which may help to explain why the Mastodon's fur is so relatively unappreciated today.

3- The Mastodon Family Tree Originated in Africa.
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. By the late Pliocene epoch, Mastodons were thick on the ground in Eurasia, and by the ensuing Pleistocene, they had crossed the Siberian land bridge and populated North America.

4- Mastodons Were Browsers Rather than Grazers.
"Grazing" and "browsing" are important terms to know when you're talking about plant-eating mammals. While Woolly Mammoths grazed on grass--lots and lots of grass--Mastodons were primarily browsers, nibbling on shrubs and the low-lying branches of trees. Lately, there has been some controversy about the extent to which Mastodons were exclusive browsers; some paleontologists believe species in the genus Mammut were not averse to grazing when circumstances demanded.
 
                                                          

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5- Male Mastodons Fought One Another with Their Tusks.
Mastodons were famous for their long, curved, dangerous-looking tusks (which still weren't quite as long, curved and dangerous-looking as the tusks wielded by Woolly Mammoths).

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6- Some Mastodon Bones Bear the Marks of Tuberculosis.
Not only human beings are susceptible to the ravages of tuberculosis. Many other mammals perish from this slow-developing bacterial infection, which can scar bones, as well as lung tissue, when they don't kill an animal outright The discovery of Mastodon specimens bearing physical evidence of tuberculosis raises the interesting theory that these prehistoric elephants were doomed by exposure to the early human settlers of North America, who brought this disease with them from the Old World.

7- Mastodons, Unlike Mammoths, Were Solitary Animals.
Woolly Mammoth fossils tend to be discovered in association with other Woolly Mammoth fossils, leading paleontologists to infer that these elephants formed small family units (if not larger herds). By contrast, most Mastodon remains are completely isolated, which is evidence (but not proof) of a solitary lifestyle among full-grown adults. It's possible that adult Mastodons only gathered together during ​the breeding season, and the only long-term associations were between mothers and children, as is the pattern with modern elephants.

8- There Are Four Identified Mastodon Species.
The most famous Mastodon species is the North American Mastodon, Mammut americanum. Two others--M. matthewi and M. raki--are so similar to M. americanum that not all paleontologists agree that they even merit their own species designation, while a fourth, M. cosoensis, was originally assigned as a species of the obscure Pliomastodon. All of these proboscids ranged across the expanse of Pliocene and Pleistocene North America and Eurasia during the Pleistocene epoch.

                                        

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9- The First American Mastodon Fossil Was Discovered in New York.
In 1705, in the town of Claverack, New York, a farmer discovered a fossilized tooth weighing a whopping five pounds. The man traded his find to a local politician for a glass of rum; the politician then gifted the tooth to the state's governor, and the governor shipped it back to England with the label "Tooth of a Giant." The fossil tooth--which, you guessed it, belonged to a North American Mastodon--quickly achieved fame as the "Incognitum," or "unknown thing," a designation it retained until naturalists had learned more about Pleistocene life.
  
                                   

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10 - Mastodons Went Extinct After the Last Ice Age.
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. 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! 
 
                                                          

[OldGreenUrsusLoxodon]

Mar 5, 2020 20:06:31 GMT brobear said:

7- Mastodons, Unlike Mammoths, Were Solitary Animals.
Woolly Mammoth fossils tend to be discovered in association with other Woolly Mammoth fossils, leading paleontologists to infer that these elephants formed small family units (if not larger herds). By contrast, most Mastodon remains are completely isolated, which is evidence (but not proof) of a solitary lifestyle among full-grown adults. It's possible that adult Mastodons only gathered together during ​the breeding season, and the only long-term associations were between mothers and children, as is the pattern with modern elephants.
                                        

So mastodons are solitary after all. It’s is interesting to learn something new everyday.

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www.zmescience.com/other/feature-post/of-mammoth-proportions-the-difference-between-mammoths-and-mastodons/

If you’ve ever visited a natural history museum, you might have seen a grand skeleton tower over you, with giant tusks gently sloping to the sky and a shape reminiscent of an elephant. Perhaps you thought immediately of a woolly mammoth, the most famous elephant relative, popularized by Manny, the grumpy mammoth in Ice Age. However, there is another relative that you most certainly have also heard of: the mastodon.

Although similar, there are key differences between mammoths and mastodons.
Origin of mastodons and mammoth
First of all, mastodons came into existence much earlier, about 27 to 30 million years ago. Mammoths are “young” by comparison, having emerged a mere 5.1 million years ago in Africa. There were multiple mammoth species, but the famous woolly mammoth is the baby of the bunch, emerging only 250,000-400,000 years ago.

Mammoths could be found across Eurasia and North America. Mastodons were not so widespread and called North and Central America their home (still a considerable area considering that they could be found from Alaska to central Mexico).

Although mammoths preferred cooler temperatures and mastodons preferred warmer temperatures, they both lived in Beringia, the land between East Siberia and Alaska that wasn’t covered by ocean during the Ice Ages.

They lived there at the same time during the early to mid-Pleistocene, but the mastodons left because it got too chilly for them. Mammoths still survived in Beringia until 13,000 years ago, and a subset that evolved to be small (about the size of a large horse) survived on arctic islands until as recently as 4,000 years ago.

To put it into perspective, the Great Pyramid was being constructed around the same time mini mammoths were ruling an arctic island — as crazy as it sounds, mammoths and the pyramids were around around at the same time (for a brief period).

Lifestyle differences
Mammoths and mastodons led different lifestyles and their appearance reflects these differences.

Mastodons lived mainly in forests. Accordingly, their teeth have cone-shaped cusps, perfect for crushing leaves and twigs. Sometimes, the plants that animals eat are also preserved alongside their fossil remains. Researchers who have quantified mastodon gut contents have found a lot of twigs from coniferous trees, while another study found mostly low, herbaceous vegetation in their guts. Therefore, they likely browsed and grazed, changing their preference based on the season and where they were.

Mastodons were named for the shape of their teeth. The French taxonomist Georges Cuvier apparently thought that the teeth looked like breasts so he derived their name from masto (“breast” in Greek) and odon (“teeth” in Greek).

On the other hand, mammoths are much more closely related to modern-day elephants than mastodons, and lived a similar lifestyle. They also used to live on large, open plains and had flat teeth with ridges for grazing. Elephants also have similarly shaped teeth. Mammoths mostly ate flowering plants because they contain more protein and are easier to digest than grasses. Some species of mammoth also munched on other types of vegetarian fare, such as cactus leaves, trees, and shrubs.

A baby mammoth preserved in the permafrost also brought to the light that baby mammoths ate their parents’ dung because it is easier to chew, like elephants living today do.

Physical differences between mammoths and mastodons
Though mammoths and mastodons were both large, hairy, elephant-like creatures, they did have some differences other than their tooth shape. Mastodons were a bit shorter and stockier. Since mammoths tended to live in colder climates, they had fatty humps where they stored extra nutrients necessary to survive the long, frigid winters and warmer fur coat. Mammoth tusks curved more while mastodon tusks were straighter and shorter.

Mammoths had a distinctive bump at the top of their skulls while mastodons had flatter heads. There were multiple species of mammoth (not just the woolly mammoth!) and mastodon that varied slightly in different aspects of their appearance — skeletal and dental differences, for example.

Extinction
Although mastodons evolved earlier than mammoths, both went extinct at a similar time, about 10,000 years ago.

There is some disagreement between experts about what exactly brought about the demise of these gentle giants — but there are two prevailing theories.

The first is that they were unable to survive due to increasing temperatures after the end of the last ice age 12,000 years ago. Glaciers retreated and sea levels rose, with the warmer temperature causing the environment to change. Forests grew up where open woodland and grasslands had been. The arctic tundra and steppe were dominated by flowering plants, but when the climate became wetter and warmer, they were replaced by grasses, which were not so nutritious or easy to digest for mammoths.

However, some researchers argue that similar warming periods had occurred over the past several million years within the ice age without such disastrous consequences. Therefore, the second theory is that someone new on the scene played a large role in their demise, more specifically, humans.
There is evidence that Homo erectus ate mammoth meat 1.8 million years ago, but this could be a result of scavenging as opposed to active hunting.

Some sites created in the past 50,000 years in Eastern Europe and Britain present further evidence that humans hunted mammoths: dwellings made from mammoth bones and mammoth remains. The spread of more skilled human hunters around Eurasia and North America coincided with the disappearance of mammoths and mastodons. However, these creatures lived across such an enormous area, including remote areas of Siberia, that it is uncertain if humans with primitive weapons would have been able to decimate them.

It is more likely that the combination of a changing climate and human hunters led these giants to their end. The shrinking of suitable areas to live likely caused many to die out, rendering the remaining populations more vulnerable.

All in all, mammoths and mastodons lived different lifestyles, but still looked quite similar, except for some special adaptations for their diet and climate. They also share similar causes for their demise. Now, on your next visit to the natural history museum, see if you can guess if that big, tusked skeleton is a mammoth or mastodon.
                               
                                         

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Mastodon by Joe Venus