Posted by Dave Thewlis on September 21, 2002 at -1:06:06 from 148.78.249.10 user dthewlis.
In Reply to: Re: Mastodons posted by Prue Eckett on September 20, 2002 at 21:17:06:
Mastodons appear to have been earlier and are of a different family. The following quotes are from encyclopedia.com. I rather suspect Prue is right about why 'Mastodon' and not 'Mammoth' but in addition I believe mammoths have generally been thought of in relation to "ice age" environments whereas the splotchprints definitely weren't in ice...
mastodon
Related: Vertebrates
(masītedon) , name for a number of prehistoric mammals of the extinct genus Mammut, from which modern elephants are believed to have developed. The earliest known forms lived in the Oligocene epoch in Africa. These were long-jawed mastodons about 4 12 ft (137 cm) high, with four tusks and a greatly elongated face. Their descendants in the Miocene epoch were the size of large elephants, the latest forms having long, flexible trunks, like those of elephants, and only two tusks. During Miocene times they spread over Europe, Asia, and North America. The mastodons were forest dwellers; they obtained their food by browsing and their teeth were more numerous and of a simpler form than those of the elephant. They were apparently extinct in the Old World by the early Pleistocene epoch but survived in North America until late Pleistocene times. They are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Proboscidae, family Mammutidae.
mammoth
Related: Vertebrates
name for several large prehistoric elephants of the extinct genus Mammuthus, which ranged over Eurasia and North America in the Pleistocene epoch. The shoulder height of the Siberian, or woolly, mammoth, which roamed throughout the Northern Hemisphere, was about 9 ft (2.7 m), and that of the imperial mammoth of the North American Great Plains was up to 13 12 ft (4.1 m). Mammoths were covered by a long, shaggy, black outer coat and a dense, woolly undercoat. They had complex, many-ridged molar teeth; long, slender upward-curved tusks; and a long trunk. Ivory hunters have collected their tusks for centuries in Siberia, where some 50,000 have been discovered; it is from these and from the drawings left by the Cro-Magnon people in the caves of S France that the mammoth's appearance is known. Paleolithic (Old Stone Age) people hunted mammoths, as is evidenced by remains of the animals found together with tools, and may have contributed to their extinction. Mammoths are classified in the phylum Chordata , subphylum Vertebrata, class Mammalia, order Proboscidea, family Elephantidae.