Mammoths, Mastodons, and Elephants

As a paleontologist, one of the questions that I am often asked is: "How are mammoths and mastodons different from modern elephants?" These animals often get mistaken for one another.

Mammoths, mastodons, and modern elephants are mammals, and all belong to the Order Proboscidae and the Family Elephantidae. In the last 55 million years, over 500 different species of Elephantids have roamed the earth at different times. Today, only two are still extant: the African elephant (Loxodonta africana) and the Asian (or Indian) elephant (Elephas maximus). Notice that they have different genus names. This is because scientists have determined that they are so different that not only are they members of different species, but they are different enough to be set apart into even larger groups. (See my article "Biological Nomenclature" for more information about how scientists give animals scientific names.)

For many years it was believed that the mammoths were the ancestors of our modern elephants, but scientists believe today that they were actually cousins.

Mammoths and mastodons are also placed into two different genera (the plural of genus). Mammoths are in the genus Mammuthus and mastodons are placed in the genus Mammut. I will talk specifically about mammoths in this article and cover the mastodons in my article "Mastodons, Ancestors of Elephants."

Both mammoths and mastodons arose from an animal called the paleomastodon that lived in North Africa about 38 million years ago, during the Eocene Epoch of the Cenozoic Era. The mammoths arose between three and four million years ago in northern and eastern Africa. They then moved into Europe. The first mammoths entered North America about 1.8 million years ago (during the Pleistocene Epoch) across the Bering Strait and were the species called Mammuthus meridionalis. Our two most common U. S. species of mammoth, the Columbian (Mammuthus columbi) and the Jeffersonian (Mammuthus jeffersonii) mammoths, came from this species. The woolly mammoth, (Mammuthus primigenius), crossed over much later, about 500,000 years ago.

Mammoths stood about 3 to 3.7m (10 to 12 feet) at the shoulder and weighed about 5,500 to 7,300kg (6 to 8 tons). Their tusks were up to 5.5m (16 feet) in length. Their only predators were the saber-toothed cats that preyed on their young and early humans.

Mammoth fossils are found fairly abundantly in the midwestern United States. Their fossils have been found on all of the continents except for Australia and South America. (Take a moment to think about what this tells us about the geologic timing of the mammoths and their ancestors.) Mammoth fossils are commonly found in areas that were covered by savannas, grasslands, or tundras during the last Ice Age.

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