Both were larger than their much hairier and smaller American mastodon cousins. Columbian mammoths towered in size over Woolly mammoths. North America during the Pleistocene (from approximately 3 million years – 12,000 years ago) was home to Columbian mammoths ( Mammuthus columbi) Woolly mammoths ( Mammuthus primigenius) in the northern regions only gomphotheres that often had four tusks American mastodons ( Mammut americanum) and, we now know thanks to their discovery in 2019, Pacific mastodons ( Mammut pacificus), all members of the Proboscidean family-a group known for its trunks (or ‘proboscis’), although not all members have them. Their goal has been to better understand what these animals ate and how they may have impacted the environment in which they lived. Jeremy Green of Kent State have spent a great deal of time studying the details of North American mammoth and mastodon teeth. It’s about peeling back the layers that form existence: how did a species grow and reproduce, where did that creature roam, what did it eat, did it experience famine or malnutrition, how did it impact its ecosystem, from what diseases did it suffer, was it a social animal, and how did it die?įor some paleontologists, finding these clues means using some of the most oft-discovered fossil of any species: teeth.ĭrs Larisa DeSantis and Greg Smith of Vanderbilt University and Dr. In other words, paleontology is no longer-nor has it been for quite some time-just about finding fossils.
What many might not realize is that paleontologists are indeed beginning to fill in those gaps. Most of us want to see what extinct animals looked like, know how they behaved, how they sounded: we want the details of their lives, above and beyond their bones. Image of the Cohoes mastodon at the NY State Museum in Albany, NY photo taken by Jeanne Timmons
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