American mastodon — Mammut americanum

Geologic period: Pleistocene

Age: The Smithsonian Deep Time mastodon from Indiana lived approximately 15,500 to 11,500 years ago.

Feeding: Primarily browsing herbivore.

Evidence: Skeletons and strongly cusped molars directly distinguish mastodons from mammoths and elephants.

Why it matters: Mastodons demonstrate that several very different proboscidean lineages shared Ice Age North America.

Plain Language Identity: An extinct North American proboscidean distinct from mammoths.

What You Are Looking At: A composite mounted skeleton of the American mastodon.

Ecosystem: Late Pleistocene woodland and wetland environments of North America.

Source Urls: https://naturalhistory.si.edu/visit/virtual-tour/current-exhibits/deep-time-virtual-tour-fossil-list; https://www.si.edu/object/nmnhpaleobiology_3447796; https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/factsheets/david-h-koch-hall-fossils-deep-time

Find Location: Indiana, United States for the Smithsonian mounted specimen.

Open Questions: Extinction involved changing climate and human hunting; their relative importance varied regionally and remains researched.

Enrichment Method: SAGE curated research pass; title + scientific name + source scene matched; chronology and taxonomy conflicts retained rather than silently corrected; evidence separated from inference

Scientific name: Mammut americanum

Evidence / representation: Representative evidence-type visual; not the exact specimen.

Representative evidence-type visual; not the exact specimen.

After the Dinosaurs: Mammals, Ice Ages and the World We Inherited.