Mastodon
A mastodon is a member of the genus, which was endemic to North America and lived from the late Miocene to the early Holocene. Mastodons belong to the order Proboscidea, the same order as elephants and mammoths. Mammut is the type genus of the extinct family Mammutidae, which diverged from the ancestors of modern elephants at least 28 million years ago, during the Oligocene.
Like other members of Mammutidae, the molar teeth of mastodons have zygodont morphology, which strongly differ from those of elephantids. In comparison to its likely ancestor Zygolophodon, Mammut is characterized by particularly long and upward curving upper tusks, reduced or absent tusks on the lower jaw, as well as the shortening of the mandibular symphysis, the latter two traits also having evolved in parallel separately in elephantids. Mastodons had an overall stockier skeletal build, a lower-domed skull, and a longer tail compared to elephantids. Fully grown male M. americanum are thought to have been at shoulder height and from in body mass on average. The size estimates suggest that American mastodon males were on average heavier than any living elephant species; they were typically larger than Asian elephants and African forest elephants of both sexes but shorter than male African bush elephants.
M. americanum, known as an "American mastodon" or simply "mastodon," had a long and complex paleontological history spanning all the way back to 1705 when the first fossils were uncovered from Claverack, New York, in the American colonies. Because of the uniquely shaped molars with no modern analogues in terms of large animals, the species caught wide attention of European researchers and influential Americans before and after the American Revolution to the point of, according to American historians Paul Semonin and Keith Stewart Thomson, bolstering American nationalism and contributing to a greater understanding of extinctions. Taxonomically, it was first recognized as a distinct species by Robert Kerr in 1792 then classified to its own genus Mammut by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach in 1799, thus making it amongst the first fossil mammal genera to be erected with undisputed taxonomic authority. The genus served as a wastebasket taxon for proboscidean species with superficially similar molar teeth morphologies but today includes 7 definite species, 1 of questionable affinities, and 4 other species from Eurasia that are pending reassessments to other genera.
Mastodons are considered to have had a predominantly browsing-based diet on leaves, fruits, and woody parts of plants. This allowed mastodons to niche partition with other members of Proboscidea in North America, like gomphotheres and the Columbian mammoth, who had shifted to mixed feeding or grazing by the late Neogene-Quaternary. It is thought that mastodon behaviors were not much different from elephants and mammoths, with females and juveniles living in herds and adult males living largely solitary lives plus entering phases of aggression similar to the musth exhibited by modern elephants. Mammut achieved maximum species diversity in the Pliocene, though the genus is known from abundant fossil evidence in the Late Pleistocene.
Mastodons for at least a few thousand years prior to their extinction coexisted with Paleoindians, who were the first humans to have inhabited North America. Evidence has been found that Paleoindians hunted mastodons based on the finding of mastodon remains with cut marks and/or with lithic artifacts.
Mastodons disappeared along with many other North American animals, including most of its largest animals, as part of the end-Pleistocene extinction event around the end of the Late Pleistocene-early Holocene, the causes typically being attributed to human hunting, severe climatic phases like the Younger Dryas, or some combination of the two. The American mastodon had its last recorded occurrence in the earliest Holocene around 11,000 years ago, which is considerably later than other North American megafauna species. Today, the American mastodon is one of the most well-known fossil species in both academic research and public perception, the result of its inclusion in American popular culture.
Taxonomy
Research history
Earliest finds
In a letter dating to 1713, Edward Hyde, 3rd Earl of Clarendon from New York reported to the Royal Society learned society of Great Britain that in 1705, a large-sized tooth was found near the side of the Hudson River by a Dutch country-fellow and was sold to New York General Assembly member Van Bruggen for a gill of rum, and Bruggen eventually gave it to Cornbury. He then stated that he sent Johannis Abeel, a recorder of Albany, New York to dig near the original site of the tooth to find more bones.Abeel reported later that he went to the town of Claverack, New York where the original bones were found. American historian Paul Semonin said that the account written by Cornbury and Abeel match up with an article in the July 30, 1705 The Boston News-Letter. The account reported skeletal evidence of an antediluvian "giant" uncovered from Claverack. The femur and one of the teeth both dissolved before they could be further observed, however.
Big Bone Lick
In 1739, a French military expedition under the command of Charles III Le Moyne explored the locality of "Big Bone Lick" and gathered fossil bones and teeth there. The French naturalist Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton examined the fossil collection brought by Longueuil and compared it with specimens of extant elephants and Siberian mammoths in 1762. Daubenton said that the bones were discovered by Native Americans. He came to the conclusion that the femur and tusk belonged to an elephant while the molars came from a separate giant hippopotamus.In Shawnee tradition, the proboscideans roamed in herds and were hunted by giants, who both eventually died out. The accounts told by the Shawnee individuals in 1762 are the oldest known documented interpretations of the "Ohio" fossils, although the traditions may have had been told for generations.
In 1767, Peter Collinson credited Irish trader George Croghan for having sent him and Benjamin Franklin fossil evidence of the mysterious proboscideans, using them for his studies. He concluded that the peculiar grinders were built for herbivorous diets of branches of trees and shrubs as well as other vegetation, a view later followed by Franklin.
In 1768, Scottish anatomist William Hunter recorded that he and his brother John Hunter observed that the teeth were not like those of modern elephants. He determined that the "grinders" from Ohio were of a carnivorous animal but believed that the tusks belonged to the same animal. After examining fossils from Franklin and Lord Shelburne, Hunter was convinced that the "pseudo-elephant", or "animal incognitum", was an animal species separate from elephants that might have also been the same as the proboscideans found in Siberia. He concluded his article with the opinion that although regrettable to philosophers, humanity should be thankful to heaven that the animal, if truly carnivorous, was extinct.
According to Bill Bryson, in 1795 the palaeontologist Georges Cuvier examined a collection of the "incognitum" bones in Paris and wrote the first formal description of the beast, calling it mastadon and so became its official discoverer.
Early American observations
In 1785, Reverend Robert Annan wrote an account recalling an event in which workers discovered bones in his farm near the Hudson River in New York in fall of 1780. The workers found four molars in addition to another that was broken and thrown away. They also uncovered bones, including vertebrae that broke shortly thereafter. Annan expressed his confusion at what the animal could be but speculated based on its "grinders" that it was carnivorous in diet. He speculated also that it was probably extinct due to some catastrophe within the globe.American statesman Thomas Jefferson stated his thoughts on Notes on the State of Virginia that the fossil proboscideans may have been carnivorous, still exist in the northern parts of North America, and are related to mammoths whose remains were found in Siberia. Jefferson referenced the theory of American social degeneracy by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, countering it by using extant and extinct animal measurements, including those of "mammoths," as proof that North America faunas were not "degenerative" in size. Semonin pointed out that social degeneracy was an offensive concept to Anglo-American naturalists and that the American proboscidean fossils were used as political tools to inspire American nationalism and counter against the theory of American degeneracy.
In 1799, laborers recovered a thighbone while digging a marl pit at John Masten's farm in Newburgh, New York, and subsequent excavations were observed by a crowd of over a hundred people. American painter and exhibitionist Charles Willson Peale visited the locality in 1801, where he first sketched the fossils then purchased excavation privileges and full ownership of the fossils from Masten and borrowed a loan from the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In addition to the first skeleton, the second was excavated using a mill-like device to drain a deep marl pit. Peale assembled a complete skeleton in his Philadelphia Museum in 1804, and its exhibit was open first to invited members of the American Philosophical Society on December 24 then to the general public on December 25 for an exhibit admission fee in addition to the general admission fee.
The special exhibition attracted thousands of visitors, and the skeleton became a US national symbol. Charles Peale's son Rembrandt Peale took the skeleton to Europe used to promote the fossil proboscidean and have it used as support for Jefferson's final rebuttals against Buffon's arguments for supposed inferiority of American faunas. Author Keith Stewart Thomson argued that the promotion of the "mastodon" skeleton made it a symbol of the strength of American nationalism and that "mammoth" as a term became associated with gigantism. Decades later, the museum bankrupted, and the first skeleton's specimens were sold to some German spectators in around 1848, who eventually sold it to Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt in Germany where it is now displayed. The second skeleton's specimens landed eventually at the American Museum of Natural History.
Other skeletons of Mammut americanum were excavated within the United States in the first half of the 19th century. One of them was collected by American showman Albert C. Koch in what is today the Mastodon State Historic Site at Missouri in 1839. He hypothesized in 1840 that the proboscidean, which he classified as Missourium, was much larger than an elephant, had horizontal tusks plus trunks, and occupied aquatic habitats. He acquired additional fossils from a spring on the Pomme de Terre River to assemble a mounted skeleton of the "Missouri Leviathan" and briefly exhibited it at After exhibiting the skeleton throughout Europe, he sold the skeleton to the British Museum of Natural History. Richard Owen then properly reassembled the skeleton, and it today is on display there.
In 1845, another skeleton was excavated from Newburgh by laborers hired by Nathaniel Brewster initially to remove lacustrine deposits to fertilize the neighboring fields. They were observed by a large number of spectators and uncovered relatively complete fossil evidence of M. americanum. The skeleton was exhibited in New York City and other New England towns then was acquired by John Collins Warren for study. After Warren's death in 1856, the skeleton was sent to Warren's family but was traded to Harvard Medical School for John Warren's skeleton. The "Warren mastodon", under the request of American paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, was purchased by the American financier J. P. Morgan for $30,000 in 1906 and donated to the American Museum of Natural History where it is exhibited today.