Who is Mastodon?
A mastodon (mastós 'breast' + odoús 'tooth') is a member of the genus Mammut (German for "mammoth"), which strictly defined, 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 (which belong to the family Elephantidae). Mammut is the type genus of the extinct family Mammutidae, which diverged from the ancestors of modern elephants at least 27-25 million years ago, during the Oligocene. 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. Naturalists struggled to explain the affinities of the proboscidean because of its uniquely shaped molars, which have no modern analogues in terms of large mammals. The American mastodon caught the attention of not only European researchers but also infl...
