Mammoths and Mastodons 



A guide to the collections of fossil proboscideans 

 in the American Museum of Natural History 



By W. D. MATTHEW 



CONTENTS Page 



1. Introductory. Distrihulioii. Early Discoveries .5 



'-2. The Extinxt Elephants. Tlie true inaiiiinoth — Alaskan mammoths — 

 skeleton from Indiana — ^size of the mammoth — the Columbian ele- 

 ])hant — the Imperial elephant — extinct Old World elephants — Pliocene 

 and Pleistocene elephants of India — evolution of elephants from 

 mastodons () 



8. The American ^Iastodon. Teeth of the mastodon — habits and en- 

 vironment — the Warren mastodon — male and female skulls — ^distrii)U- 

 tion of the American mastodon l'^ 



4. The Later Tertiary Mastodons. The two-tusked mastodon 



Dibelodon — the long-jawed mastodon Tetralophodon — the beaked 

 mastodon Rhyncotherium — the primitive four tusked mastodons. 

 Trilophodon — the Dinotherium lo 



5. The Early Tertiary Ancestors of the Mastodons. PaUtomastodon 



— Moeritherium — characters and affinities 18 



G. The E\ olution of the Proboscidea. Doubtful position of Moerither- 

 ium — Palseomastodon a primitive proboscidean — Dinotherium an 

 aberrant side-branch — Trilophodon descended from Pahieomastodon — 

 branching into several phyla in Pliocene and Pliocene — Di})elodon 

 phylum in North and South America — Mastodon phylum^elephant 

 phylum — origin and dispersal of the proboscidea and their progressive 

 extinction '^l 



