PRIMEVAL MAN 231 



eyes to see it. Nor were they the only represen- 

 tatives of their family. A much more archaic 

 type of elephant, the mastodon, flourished be- 

 side its gigantic cousin. The mastodon was a 

 relatively squat creature, standing certainly 

 four feet shorter than the imperial elephant, 

 with comparatively small and slightly curved 

 tusks and a flatter head. Enormous numbers 

 of mastodons ranged over what is now the 

 United States, and the adjacent parts of Can- 

 ada and Mexico. The mastodons represented a 

 stage farther back in the evolutionary line than 

 the true elephants, and in the Old World they 

 died out completely before the latter disap- 

 peared even from Europe and Siberia. But in 

 North America, for unknown reasons, they 

 outlasted their more highly developed kinsfolk 

 and rivals, and there is some ground for be- 

 lieving that they did not completely disap- 

 pear until after the arrival of man on this con- 

 tinent. 



The elephant stock developed in the Old 

 World, and it is probable that the true ele- 

 phants were geologically recent immigrants to 

 America, coming across the land bridge which 

 then connected Alaska and Siberia. In Cali- 

 fornia they encountered the big descendants of 

 other big immigrants, which had reached North 



