Genus †Mammut, belonging to the family of Mastodons (Mammutidae)
A mastodon (mastós 'breast' + odoús 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus †Mammut (family Mammutidae) that inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of the Pleistocene 10,000 to 11,000 years ago.[1] Mastodons lived in herds and were predominantly forest-dwelling animals that lived on a mixed diet obtained by browsing and grazing, somewhat similar to their distant relatives, modern elephants, but probably with greater emphasis on browsing.[1]
†M. americanum, the American mastodon, and †M. pacificus,[1] the Pacific mastodon, are the youngest and best-known species of the genus. Mastodons disappeared from North America as part of a mass extinction of most of the Pleistocene megafauna, widely believed to have been caused by a combination of climate changes at the end of the Pleistocene combined with overexploitation by Clovis hunters.[1]
A few of the largest proboscideans, among them †Mammut borsoni, were found out to have reached and surpassed the body size of the largest indricotheres.[3}
