Mastodon

About

A mastodon (from Ancient Greek μαστός (mastós) 'breast' and ὀδούς (odoús) 'tooth') is a member of the genus Mammut (German for 'mammoth'), 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 (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 28 million years ago, during the Oligocene. Like other members of Mammutidae, the molar teeth of mastodons have zygodont morphology (where parallel pairs of cusps are merged into sharp ridges), which strongly differ from those of elephantids.