# Wooly Mammoth & Mastadon

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wooly-mammoth-mastadon/267136>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 2, 2004, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wooly-mammoth-mastadon/267136 "2004-10-02T02:04:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![rippingtons\_fan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rippingtons_fan/32/11767_2.png) [@rippingtons\_fan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rippingtons_fan)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2004, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wooly-mammoth-mastadon/267136/1 "2004-10-02T02:04:04Z")

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What are the differences between the wooly mammoth and the mastadon? Did they live at the same time in the same areas?

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**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2004, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wooly-mammoth-mastadon/267136/2 "2004-10-02T02:25:09Z")

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First off, there were a number of species (and in fact probably genera) of mammoth – the woolly mammoth (_Mammuthus primigenius_) was the northernmost member of the family, probably subsisting on tundra vegetation. But quickly:

Mammoths were members of Family Elephantidae. They had high foreheads, the ridged molars typical of modern elephants (being grazers), usually upcurved tusks, and were generally built much like the African Elephant. (In fact, one Eurasian species of mammoth is usually assigned to Genus Loxodonta along with the African Elephant.)

Mastodons were cousins of modern elephants, belonging to another family. (Ask any three experts in proboscidean taxonomy, and you’ll get four answers as to classification here, but the traditional assignment is _Mammutidae_ for the American Mastodon, _Mammut americanus_. ) They were forest and open-space browsers with low, sloping foreheads and large octocusp molars. Their tusks were straight. The term “mastodon” is often used loosely to refer to the gomphotheres and other elephant-relatives in a variety of families, nearly all flourishing during the late Tertiary and extinct by the Ice Age.

However, one mastodon, _Cuvierionus_, from South America, seems to have survived down to historic times, subfossil specimens having been found that date to the 3rd century AD.

There was an enormous variety of proboscideans during the Miocene and Pliocene, occupying a wide range of large-body herbivore ecological niches. Most went extinct before, during, or at the end of the Ice Age.

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**Author:** ![Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e47c2d/32.png) [@Biffy\_the\_Elephant\_Shrew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffy_the_Elephant_Shrew)\
**Post date:** [October 2, 2004, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wooly-mammoth-mastadon/267136/3 "2004-10-02T02:56:50Z")

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> [@Polycarp](#):
>
> They were forest and open-space browsers with low, sloping foreheads and large octocusp molars.

The word “mastodon,” incidentally, means “breast tooth.” The beast was named for the nipple-like peaks on those molars.