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[edit] Old talk

Seems like a taxonomy error here: The present link from Mammutidae in the taxonomy box, goes to Mammoths, which was a genus within the family elephantidae, as far as I understand.

From my own website:"The genus mammoths, in latin Mammuthus, was a group of species, belonging to the family of elephants, entirely separated in taxonomy from the Mastodons and the genus family Mammutidae, although they sometimes shared the same envoronment. (For scientific reasons, the mastodons was renamed to family Mammutidae, which became a source for future confusion and misunderstandings)."

I will not change this however, until someone else gives me confirmation or debate, since I may be wrong.

Dan Koehl 13:54, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC) http://www.elephant.se

It looks like that's the generally accepted taxonomy (note, though, that they aren't entirely separated from the elephants because they are all Probscidea), and I've changed the page accordingly. Also, it looks like the claim that mastodont is scientifically preferred isn't true, especially since the word derives from the old genus name Mastodon. As such, this page should probably be moved to mastodon, which is the more common name. Josh 15:00, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Image debates

[edit] Image:Miomastodon.jpg

I don't know if this should go on this page, or its own page. Is it the same thing? Or different? Toothsom 21:31, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Is it a Platybelodon? looks like it Enlil Ninlil 09:58, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe it is a Platybelodon. The lower jaw does not look the same. SLATE 04:44, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks like a Platybelodon to me. Jaw is partialy obscurred by the label though - Jack (talk) 01:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:MastodonSkeleton.jpg

I'm pretty sure the picture of the skeleton in a museum is of a mammoth, not a mastodon, judging by those beautifully curved (but unmastodon-like) tusks.Erimus 17:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with Erimus - I'm removing the image from this page until it can be verified as being a mastadon. --SLATE

[edit] Image:mastodon.jpg

Neither does this seem to be a mastodon - Jack (talk) 01:45, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Habitat

Hi, in the Habitat section, I changed "Northeast" to point to Northeastern United States instead of Northeast. I hope that didn't introduce any errors. --Kjoonlee 14:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] photo of mastodon and mammoth

The caption under this great comparison photo is erroneous: the woolly mammoth is on the left, and the mastodon is on the right.4.154.67.125 12:35, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

You are right of course. It's fixed. Thanks. ArthurWeasley 22:23, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

According to the this BBC news item: [1] Mastodons were also native to Europe, indeed the specimen in the BBC article was found in Greece. This a article makes no mention of this and give the impression that Mastodons lived exclusively in the Americas.

[edit] Browsers vs. grazers

I don't understand the difference between the two terms, and the wikilinks currently there don't help to disambiguate them. Is there an appropriate wikidictionary link we can add to help? johnpseudo 00:59, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the link. A browser is "a herbivore whose nutrition generally comes from high growing plants as opposed to grasses". DanielBeaver 18:26, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I still found this confusing. I couldn't learn what browser meant from wikipedia, so I made some changes. (I just learned the word browser today, in the comment above, but I verified it in google books.) In the intro to this page, I added a few words about browsers and changed the "browser" link from pointing to herbivory to pointing to the browser disambiguation page (which links in turn to herbivory); I also added browser as a see also in the herbivory page (The word "browser" didn't show up on the herbivore page before); and finally, I fleshed out the relevant definition of browser and added a citation there to a definition in an ecology book I found via google books.--sbump (talk) 16:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mastadon skeleton on display in Portland, OR

It should be added to the list of displayed fossils, that Portland, Oregon has a full skeleton on display inside the Oregon Zoo. There is a small "Museum of the Elephant" near the Elephant House, which contains the skeleton. Here is the website, the photograph is at the bottom. The Lilah Callen Holden Elephant Museum

(There is a conflict here, the Oregon Zoo website says the display fossil died about 7,000 years ago, while the wiki article says they went extinct about 10,000 years ago.)

[edit] Human impact on fossil remains

Im new to wikipedia but i remember learning that humans hunted mastodons and during the winter stored the meat in frozen lakes, so various fossils have been found in small inland lakes. Maybe information relating to this could be added. Only a suggestion, i don't know enough for certain and don't know any sources.

jmh2114: Actually the ice that fossils have been found in (or more approriately, near) is not frozen lake ice which is formed by the slow freezing of a slow- or non-moving body of water. The ice encasing/near large mammal fossils is the type of ice formed when water moving through air freezes. Also, these large mammals lived in a warm environment that rarely if ever reached freezing temperatures, which would have killed them. Therefore these mammals were nowhere near any lake that would freeze. Mastadons & Mammoths were never frozen in lakes per any discoveries. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmh2114 (talk • contribs) 15:49, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Mammut americanum

Should we merge the Mammut americanum article to Mastodon article. 58.71.169.174 15:43, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Habitat

Can someone please update the habitat section? about half of this infomation has nothing to do with the habitat, and the other half is only related to the North American Mastodon.

==Habitat==

The American mastodon (Mammut americanum) lived in North America. Mastodons are thought to have first appeared almost four million years ago and became extinct about 10,000 years ago, at the same time as most other Pleistocene megafauna. Though their habitat spanned a large territory, mastodons were most common in the Ice age spruce forests of the eastern United States, as well as in warmer lowland environments.^[1] Their remains have been found as far as 300 kilometers offshore in the northeastern United States, in areas that were dry land during the low sea level stand of the last ice age.^[2] There have been, however, findings of mastodon fossils in South America and also on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state.^[3] Mastodon fossils have been found in Stewiack, Nova Scotia, Canada, and also were discovered north of Fort Wayne, Indiana, resulting in the "Mastodons" being chosen as the mascot for athletic teams at Indiana-Purdue University at Fort Wayne (IPFW) by the students. The uncovered fossils are displayed inside Kettler Hall on the IPFW campus.

[edit] Living mastodons?

I read hints elsewhere that a colony of living mastodons has been found in Nepal but can find no proof. Can anyone confirm or deny this? 83.105.50.123

[edit] Etymology

Every source I've seen (Mirriam-Webster, the Concise OED, Collins Dictionary, and a few online sources found via google) says that the name 'mastodon' is derived from the breast-like shape of tubercles on the molar teeth. However, there has been a recent edit suggesting that it actually refers to the mastoid process of the temporal bone, as apparently this is where the teeth in question are attached. This seems rather unlikely, on the face of it (as the mastoid is nowhere near the jaw, at least in humans, and the upper molars are typically attached to the maxilla), and I can't find a reference that supports it. On the other hand, I can't find a clearly labelled picture of a mastodon skull to refute it, either, so I might be wrong. Does anyone have a clear citation about this? Thanks. Anaxial (talk) 20:30, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

A further cite supporting the 'nipple-tooth' etymology: Agusti, Jordi & Anton, Mauricio (2002). Mammoths, Sabretooths, and Hominids. New York: Columbia University Press, 106. ISBN 0-231-11640-3.  Hunting back through the diffs, it appears as if the word 'mastoid' was originally inserted in the article as an adjective meaning 'breast-like', and did not refer to the bone (which is where the link currently, and in my view misleadingly, points). Unless somebody can provide a clear cite for the 'attached to the mastoid process' etymology, I'll revert, but I'll leave it a few days, just in case. Anaxial (talk) 21:44, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the sources, just noticed the internal inconsistency and adapted the lead to the article per WP:MOS/WP:LEAD. Will look into sources later on but for now would say that the inconsistency is unencyclopedic. Mira Gambolputty (talk) 21:56, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I agree about the inconsistency. I did correct it in my earlier edit (by correcting the comment in the main article as well as the one in the lead), but you reverted it. Possibly by mistake? Anaxial (talk) 22:01, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, missed that. My mistake; restored your version. :-) Mira Gambolputty (talk) 22:16, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Anaxial's view is supported by the sources so "nipple tooth" it is. I've slightly copy-edited the Description section, replaced a dead link, and added the Agusti & Anton ref. Mira Gambolputty (talk) 23:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Museums

Do we really need the list of museums? Its getting rather long, and if it really is useful, I'd suggest it would be more usefully separated off to its own page: List of museums with mastodon skeletons on display or some such. Personally, though, it strikes me as rather unnecessary, since it seems there are so many as to render it a fairly non-notable fact. Anaxial (talk) 18:59, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Those interested in the subject may well be interested in the museums. So, I think it's a good resource. I'm going to add a "split" tag to the section. →Wordbuilder (talk) 18:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Such lists are not standard on other articles about prehistoric animals, and are highly unnecessary. Funkynusayri (talk) 03:39, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

We need to look at Wikipedia guidelines/policy for direction and not to other articles. What makes such a list unnecessary or "highly unnecessary"? Does Wikipedia prohibit such a list? →Wordbuilder (talk) 14:27, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• Listing museums that have mastodont skeletons on display? That's even original research, we can't verify that they do without sources, and we can't verify what other museums not listed have them too. Do we list evey zoo with tigers in the tiger article too for example? It's useless and unverifiable. The source is pretty much the guy who made the list. But well, let's keep it in if no one else objects. Funkynusayri (talk) 15:24, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
  • First, it's not original research since each of the entries links to either a Wikipedia article on the museum or directly to the museum's website. So, most (or all) of them are sourced. Second, very few lists on Wikipedia are exhaustive. That's what Template:Dynamic list is for. Finally, I'm not advocating leaving the list in the article, I'm advocating splitting it into List of museums and colleges with mastodon fossils on display. No single person put the list together. Quite a few editors contributed to it. Would you object to splitting it? →Wordbuilder (talk) 15:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

List created at List of museums and colleges with mastodon fossils on display. →Wordbuilder (talk) 17:46, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Link maintenance

Link No. 9 (to Yahoo) does not work. http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060924/sc_space/tuberculosishelpedbringdownmastodons --Lupo Manaro (talk) 19:46, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

That line had another source so I removed the dead one. →Wordbuilder (talk) 20:28, 9 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Extinction section

The extinction section only mildly address 2 possibilities for extinction:

(1) Human hunting 
(2) Tuberculosis

Neither of these are supported in the fossil record. Many Mastadons & Mammoths have been discovered but very few if any have any marks of human cause of death (spears, arrows, knife marks etc). Also, of specimens where cause of death has been established, suffocation/asphyxiation was the determination 100% of the time. Also, silt & gravel is commonly found in digestive tracts. Neither is consistent or necessary for tuberculosis.

Therefore, this section needs to either state "we don't know what caused extinction" or you should simply present the evidence of what the fossil record shows and let the reader decide.

The existing Extinction section should therefore be updated or removed. —Jmh2114 (talk) 16:01, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I removed the unsourced claim regarding mastodons being used as food. I found a better source for the tuberculosis claim. What remains in the section is properly sourced. If you want to add alternate possible explanations of extinction, you may do so as long as you include sources. However, you should not remove what is there now. →Wordbuilder (talk) 16:16, 16 April 2008 (UTC)