Name: Mammut.
Phonetic: Mam-mut.
Named By: Johann Friedrich Blumenbach - 1799.
Synonyms: Mastodon, Tetracaulodon,
Missourium, Leviathan, Pliomastodon.
Classification: Chordata, Mammalia,
Proboscidea, Mammutidae.
Species: M. americanum, M.
cosoensis, M. furlongi, M. matthewi, M. pacificus, M.
pentilicus, M.
raki, M. spenceri.
Diet: Herbivore.
Size: Up to around 2.8 meters high at the
shoulder, though there is some variance between the species.
Known locations: Across Africa, Eurasia North
America and Central America.
Time period: Early Oligocene through to the end of
the Pleistocene/early Holocene.
Fossil representation: Hundreds of specimens, some
including fur.
Prehistoric
elephants of the genus Mammut are actually more
popularly known as
‘mastodons’. The name mastodon means ‘nipple tooth’ and is a
reference to the lumpy projections on top of the tooth crown. The
name mastodon is today considered an obsolete term for the mammoth
genus, yet it is still has a more common occurrence in popular media
than Mammut.
Mammut
can and often are confused with mammoths, even though these two
groups of proboscids are actually only distantly related. Mammut
are
usually distinguished by their more robust (heavily built)
skeletons and skulls. Additionally the skulls of Mammut
are flatter
than the rounded skulls of mammoths. Some Mammut
species however have
been found with fur which indicates that they were actually hairy,
although probably without the thicker under layer seen in mammoths.
Another difference is that mammoths were adapted for grazing grass
whereas the teeth of Mammut had lower crowns with
knobbled cusps better
for processing soft vegetation, which means that Mammut
were browsers
of bushes and trees. This is corroborated by fossil evidence that
reveals Mammut regularly roamed around spruce
forests, although they
do also occasionally appear in other habitats. Further similarities
to mammoths are the large tusks that curve upwards, although not to
the extent of the mammoths.
These
tusks of Mammut are up to five meters long
although one tusk is often
just a bit shorter than the other. There also seems to be sexual
dimorphism as well since female Mammut had lower
tusks while males had
tusks which were higher. Male Mammut would have
fought each other for
mating rights to females by pushing each other with their heads and
tusks. Analyses of male tusks support this since they show damage to
what would have been the base of the tusk when it was forced down from
the impact with a competing rival. These contests were annual
occurrences with the strongest males (called bulls) winning the
rights to pass on their genes to the next generation of Mammut.
Because elephants are known to have long gestation periods, Mammut
probably also did and with this in mind mating probably occurred at a
time of year where gestation would continue over the winter months so
that the young were born when food was approaching the point of its
most plentiful and weather conditions were warmest. When this
occurred however would depend upon the exact gestation period of Mammut
which currently can only be guessed at.
Mammut
species had an incredibly broad range across both time and the globe
and even though the ultimately went extinct, these species belonged
to one of the most successful genera of mammals ever known. The most
famous of these species is M. americanum (often
known as the
American mastodon) was also one of the last species to live.
Although they managed to spread across much of the globe, Mammut
do
not seem to have taken part in the Great American Interchange, an
event where North and South American animals intermixed for the first
time after the creation of a permanent land bridge (the Isthmus of
Panama) between the Americas. South American remains that were once
considered to have been those of Mammut have now
been assigned to the
gomphothere elephants Cuvieronius
and Stegomastodon.
The
exact extinction date for Mammut is hard to
establish, but most older
sources cite the end of the Pleistocene as the time that they and much
of the other Megafauna disappeared. However more modern analysis of
Mammut remains, including radiocarbon dating has
now revealed that
Mammut may have still been roaming North America
between 5000 and
4000 BP (before present). The precise cause for this
extinction is still unknown but there are some theories that try to
explain it. One of the most common and plausible theories is the
climate change that occurred at the end of the Pleistocene which saw
the last major glaciation, however with remains dated to several
thousand years ago this is unlikely to be the sole cause. Early
humans are known to have hunted mammoths and elephants, but it’s hard
to imagine how a relatively small population of humans could wipe out
all the Mammut and most of the other Megafauna over
just a few thousand
years. Another clue is analysis of fossils that reveal living Mammut
suffered from the diseases such as tuberculosis.
Anyone
of these things could and would have contributed to a reduction in
total population numbers, but probably not to the point where the
entire population was wiped out. However when you stack all of these
factors up together you end up with a sequence of events that are just
as devastating as single major event such as something like an asteroid
or a comet hitting the planet or even a super-volcanic eruption. Here
the picture would be diseases such as tuberculosis keeping a cap on the
population (the more individuals, the more likely a disease can
spread) and harder times such as glaciations stressing the population
further. Mammut could cope with these
circumstances, they had done
for many millions of years, but with the new factor of human hunting
appearing towards the end of the Pleistocene, it was one additional
factor too many for them to survive.
Further reading
- Mammalian fauna of the upper Juntura Formation, the black butte local
fauna. in The Juntura Basin: Studies in Earth History and Paleoecology.
- Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 53 (1): 77. - J.
A. Shotwell & D. E. Russel - 1963.
- A Late Cenozoic Vertebrate Fauna from the Coso Mountains, Inyo
County, California. - Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication
483 (3): 77–109. - J. R. Schultz - 1937.
- Intestinal Contents of a late Pleistocene Mastodont from
Midcontinental North America. - Quaternary Research 36: 120–125. -
Lepper et al. - 1991.
- The oldest Mammut (Mammalia: Proboscidea) from
New Mexico. - New
Mexico Geology: 10–12. - Spencer G. Lucas & Gary S. Morgan -
1999.
- The American Mastodon Mammut americanum in Mexico. - O. J. Polaco, J.
Arroyo-Cabrales, M. E. Corona J. G. L�pez-Oliva - In Cavarretta, G.
Gioia, P. Mussi, M. et al. The World of Elephants - Proceedings of the
1st International Congress, Rome October 16–20, 2001. Rome: Consiglio
Nazionale delle Ricerche - 2001.
- Mammoth (Mammuthus spp.) and American mastodont (Mammut
americanum)
bonesites: what do the differences mean? - Advances in Mammoth Research
9: 185–204. - G. Haynes & J. Klimowicz - 2003.
- The Overmyer Mastodon (Mammut americanum) from
Fulton County,
Indiana. - The American Midland Naturalist 159 (1): 125–146. - N.
Woodman - 2008.
- Fossil Proboscidea from the Upper Cenozoic of Central America:
Taxonomy, Evolutionary and Pelobiogeographic Significance. - Revista
Geol�gica de Am�rica Central. 42: 9–42. - Spencer G. Lucas &
Guillermo E. Alvarado - 2010.
- Regional variation in the browsing diet of Pleistocene Mammut
americanum (Mammalia, Proboscidea) as recorded by dental
microwear
textures. - Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 487:
59–70. - J. L. Green, L. R. G. DeSantis & G. J. Smith - 2017.
- Mammut pacificus sp. nov., a newly recognized species of mastodon
from the Pleistocene of western North America. - PeerJ. 7: e 6614. - A.
C. Dooley, E. Scott, J. Green, K. B. Springer, B. S. Dooley &
G. J. Smith - 2019.
- American mastodon mitochondrial genomes suggest multiple dispersal
events in response to Pleistocene climate oscillations. - Nature
Communications. 11 (1): 4048. - Emil Karpinski, Dirk Hackenberger,
Grant Zazula, Chris Widga, Ana T. Duggan, G. Brian Golding, Melanie
Kuch, Jennifer Klunk, Christopher N. Jass, Pam Groves, Patrick
Druckenmiller, Blaine W. Schubert, Joaquin Arroyo-Cabrales, William F.
Simpson, John W. Hoganson, Daniel C. Fisher, Simon Y. W. Ho, Ross D. E.
MacPhee, & Hendrik N. Poinar - 2020.